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TOBACCO-USING; 



PHILOSOPHICAL EXPOSITION 



THE EFFECTS OF TOBACCO ON THE HUMAN SYSTEM. 



Author of "The Hydropathic Encyclopedia;" "Hygienic Hand Book;" "The 
Alcoholic Controversy;" "Alcoholic Medication;" "The True Tem- 
perance Platform;" "Prize Essay on Temperance;" "Prize 
Essay on Tobacco ;" " True Healing Art;" Ac, &c. 



PUBLISHED AT 



THE OFFICE OF THE HEALTH REFORMER, 
BATTLE CREEK, MICH. 

1*872. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, bv 

THE HEALTH REFORM INSTITUTE, BATTLE CREEK MICH 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 



The wide-spread and destructive vice of tobacco-using, 
the well-known ability of the author, and his popularity as 
a philosophical writer upon all those subjects pertaining to 
life and health, and the importance of the subject itself, 
should secure a candid and careful reading of the following 
pages by all into whose hands they may fall. 

We are happy to offer to the public in this pamphlet a phil- 
osophic exposition of the effects of tobacco-using upon the 
human system. Most writers upon this subject are superfi- 
cial. Many deal in wit and ridicule. But tobacco slaves 
are not to be laughed out of so strong a habit. The writer 
of this work appeals to the reason and the conscience. And 
may his good words reach the minds and hearts of thou- 
sands. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Tobacco-Using, 9 

Relations of Tobacco to Vitality, 12 

The Properties of Tobacco, 13 

Physical Evils of Tobacco-Using, 38 

The Breath of Life, 44 

Young Men the Chief Smokers, 48 

Tobacco-Using and Tight-Lacing, 50 

A Learned Discussion on Tobacco, 63 

Mental Evils of Tobacco-Using, 54 

Moral Evils of Tobacco-Using, 58 

Social Evils of Tobacco-Using, 64 

The Tobacco Business, 66 

Tobacco Culture and Revenue, 67 

Tobacco and Intemperance,... 69 

Expensiveness of Tobacco-Using, 72 

Conclusion, 75 

The Remedy, 76 



GLOSSAEY, 



Anaphrodisiac. That which abate3 sexual passion. 
Anesthetic. An agent that deprives of feeling. 
Antiparasitic. That which destroys parasites, or vermin. 
Antiphlogistic. Counteracting inflammation. 
Antispasmodic. A preventive or curative of spasms; ano- 
dyne. 

Cataplasm. A poultice. 

Cathartic. Purgative or laxative ; popularly termed physic. 
Cholagogue. A laxative, reputed to cause a flow of bile. 
Conium. Narcotic poisons, as hemlock, parsley, &c. 
Cutaneous. Pertaining to the skin. 

Depurator. That which cleanses ; generally used of the 

organs which. expel morbid matter. 
Diaphoretic. Inciting perspiration, or sweating. 
Diuretic. Inciting secretion and discharge of urine. 

Emetic. That which causes vomiting. 

Emunctories. Organs to carry off excrements, or excremen- 

titious matter. 
Errhine. Exciting sneezing. 
Expectorant. To promote discharges from the lung3 or 

throat, by coughing, spitting, &c. 

Materia Medica. A general term for all substances used as 

curatives or medicines. 
Mucous Membrane. The membrane lining all the cavities of 

the body which open externally, secreting the fluid 

called mucus. 

Narcotic. Having the power of stupefying. 
Nervine. That which is supposed to act on the nervous 
system. 

(7) 



8 GLOSSARY. 

Parturifacient, or parturient. A medicine to promote labor, 
or hasten childbirth. 

Pathological. Relating to the knowledge of disease. 

Poison. A name for all substances which, when introduced 
into the animal economy, either internally or by absorp- 
tion, act in a noxious manner on the vital properties or 
the texture of the organs. 

Saliva. Spittle ; salivary glands, secreting organs of the 

saliva. 
Schneiderian. The membrane which receives the impression 

of odors ; the seat of smell. 
Secretion. Separating or depositing; as certain glands 

separate the materials of the blood into bile, saliva, &c, 

and deposit them in their appropriate places in the 

system. 
Sero-mucous. From serous, thin, watery, and mucous, 

gummy, resembling mucilage. 
Sialagogue. That which promotes the secretion of saliva. 
Sternutatory. Same as errhine ; promoting sneezing, as snuff. 

Therapeutics. Relating to the treatment of disease. 
Tonics. That which excites slowly. 
Toxicology. Treatise on poisons. 

Vascular. That which belongs or relates to vessels. 



•g* As the first part of this pamphlet treats of the " modus 
operandi" (mode of operation) of medicines, we have pre- 
pared this brief glossary of the terms used, for the con- 
venience of general readers. 



TOBACCO - USING. 



THE history of the introduction, and rapid 
extension of the habit of tobacco-using, 
among the people of the civilized nations, is, 
perhaps, the most sad as well as the most remark- 
able example of individual depravity and social 
delusion that can be named. Intrinsically, smok- 
ing, chewing, or snuffing, tobacco, is, unquestion- 
ably, the most filthy and disgusting vice to which 
respectable human beings were ever addicted ; 
yet it has become a " second nature " in low life, 
an " elegant accomplishment " in high life, and a 
besotting indulgence among all classes of society. 
In a little more than three hundred years it 
has enslaved three hundred millions of the human 
race, and is now, more rapidly than ever before, 
extending its baneful influence throughout our 
country, and in other countries. It needs, there- 
fore, no prophet's vision to foresee that, unless 
the vice is in some manner arrested, and the pub- 
lic mind set determinedly against it, in a few cen- 
turies more all may become tobacco-users ; and 
then the human family must inevitably go down, 
down — how low, none but the Infinite can tell. 



Tobacco-Using. 



10 TOBACCO - USING. 

To the undepraved instincts of human beings, 
nothing is more repulsive than the " noxious 
weed/' in all of its parts and at ali stages of its 
growth. But, when the vital organism is once 
saturated, so to speak, by its prolonged use — 
when the whole mass of blood and all the secre- 
tions are contaminated by its presence — the indi- 
vidual then, although fully and fearfully convinced 
of its blighting effects on body and mind, has sel- 
dom either the power or the inclination to rid 
himself of the habit of using it. He is conscious 
of his degradation ; he knows the evil and feels 
the accumulating consequences, yet lacks both 
ability and will to achieve his own emancipation. 
A veritable Bohun Upas, antivitalizing in every 
sense, and a rank poison under all circumstances, 
it is ranked, by the medical profession, with hen- 
bane, strychnine, nightshade, prussic acid, opium, 
alcohol, etc. In a word, it is regarded as one of 
the most deadly agents of the drug shop. 

That tobacco-using is an evil, an immense and 
portentous evil, physically, mentally, morally, 
and socially, is generally admitted. But, unfor- 
tunately, the mere admission of a wrong does not 
necessarily tend to remove it. Probably no per- 
son addicted to the habit of profane swearing, or 
to alcoholic intoxication, will hesitate to acknowl- 
edge that the habit is evil and that continually ; 
yet while making the admission he will pursue the 



TOBACCO - USING. 11 

habit as though it were a virtue instead of a vice. 
Here, as in the case of tobacco-using, conviction 
does not imply conversion. 

Although many instructive little books and sev- 
eral valuable prize essays have been written and 
published on the subject of tobacco-using, and 
widely circulated among the people, their influ- 
ence thus far has been almost infinitesimal com- 
pared with the magnitude of the evil. They have, 
indeed, in some degree retarded its blighting 
march in certain places, and effected the reforma- 
tion of a few individuals ; but, I fear, while one 
has been reformed out of the habit ten have been 
deformed into it. And one reason (it seems to me 
the chief reason) why anti-tobacco literature has 
been so almost powerless for good is, probably, the 
fact that the rationale of the effects of tobacco is 
not well understood by the people ; for, certainly 
it is not correctly explained by the medical pro- 
fession. Nor have I faith that the Anti-Tobacco 
Societies will ever accomplish much, although aided 
by the "inevitable George Trask," with his con- 
stant and vigorous appeals to the people, until 
this matter is thoroughly comprehended, in all its 
momentous bearings, by the masses. 

I propose, therefore, to make a philosophical 
exposition of this subject the leading feature of 
this essay, premising that the history of tobacco, 
its various forms, preparations, adulterations, 
chemical properties, etc., and the testimonies of 



12 TOBACCO - USING. 

eminent physicians, physiologists, philanthropists, 
divines, statesmen, and sanitarians (hundreds of 
whose names could be readily quoted), can be 
learned from the various works now before the 
public. 

RELATIONS OF TOBACCO TO VITALITY. 

As tobacco is confessedly a poison, no argument 
is required to show that its contact with the vital 
organism is necessarily injurious. But the opin- 
ion is extensively entertained that we may become 
so accustomed to certain poisons that they are 
to be regarded as " necessary evils ;" and that 
thenceforward they are more useful than injuri- 
ous ; and we are met on all sides with the state- 
ment that, after the individual has become suffi- 
ciently accustomed to the influence of tobacco, it 
occasions pleasurable sensations, with a conscious- 
ness of (at least temporarily) augmented vigor 
and activity of body and mind ; that he is very 
wretched if he does not have it at stated periods, 
etc.; and it is difficult for him to understand that 
an agent whose employment seems to energize and 
exhilarate many of the bodily functions, and some 
of the mental powers, can be so very injurious. 
The delusion consists in mistaking a wasteful vi- 
tal action for an invigorating effect. And I pur- 
pose to show, scientifically, hoiv it is, and why it 
is, that tobacco and other poisons may occasion 



THE PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 13 

sensuous gratification and a sense of preternatural 
energy, and yet be at the same time destructive 
to life. 

THE "PROPERTIES" OF TOBACCO. 

As a medicinal drug, tobacco is said to possess 
more " properties/' and to belong to more classes 
of medicines, than any other article of the Materia 
Medica — no less than seventeen. It is regarded 
as errhine, sternutatory, sialagogue, emetic, cathar- 
tic, expectorant, cholagogue, diaphoretic, diuretic, 
antispasmodic, nervine, stimulant, narcotic, anes- 
thetic, anaphrodisiac, parturifacient, and antipar- 
asitic. This wide range of " remedial virtues" 
allies it to the most dangerous and deadly poisons 
known to toxicologists ; for it is an approved ad- 
age with the medical profession that " our strong- 
est poisons are our best remedies " — "uhi virus, 
ibi virtus." 

I am of the opinion, however, that this time- 
honored maxim expresses a great error, and that 
it is predicated on a false theory of the effects, or 
"modus operandi" of medicines. And I think 
that the true solution of this problem will afford 
us the key to explain all of the seemingly contra- 
dictory " operations " of tobacco ; to demonstrate 
the rationale of its effects, and to determine posi- 
tively and scientifically how and why it is, under 
all circumstances, an enemy to vitality. And as 



14 TOBACCO - USING. 

I can see no way of opposing the practice of to- 
bacco-using successfully, except in a complete 
and philosophical exposition of the rationale of 
its u modus operandi" I shall try to make this 
matter plain. 

Tobacco, as we have seen, is considered to pos- 
sess seventeen medicinal properties. What is the 
explanation of this ? What is a medicinal prop- 
erty? Why is tobacco emetic, cathartic, expec- 
torant, etc.? Sow is it nervine, stimulant, nar- 
cotic, etc.? The answers to these questions will 
not only dissipate all the mysteriousness of the 
effects of tobacco, but will solve many of the most 
perplexing problems in medical science and the 
healing art. 

Let the reader now bear in mind that, what is 
termed a " medicinal property " is not a thing, a 
principle, a substance, or an entity, existing in 
the drug, but is, on the contrary, an action or 
process of the living system. The language of 
medical books on this subject, though consistent 
with the prevalent theory, expresses just the op- 
posite of the truth ; hence, by reversing the prop- 
osition, we get the exact truth. 

In explaining the effects (improperly called 
" actions ") of medicines, or poisons, medical men 
have assumed that each drug has an inherent af- 
finity for some part, organ, or structure of the 
living system, in virtue of which affinity it acts 
on, or makes an impression on, such part, organ, 



THE PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 15 

or structure ; and this affinity, or action, or im 
pression, is termed its " property." The truth is 
just the contrary. It is the living system which 
acts, and not the dead drug, in their relations to 
each other. The " property " is in the living 
system; and that property is not "affinity," but 
antagonism. 

We are taught in the standard works on Mate- 
ria Medica, Therapeutics, and Toxicology, that 
medicinal drugs, as well as other poisons, possess, 
inherently in themselves, certain special properties, 
or affinities (which constitute their " remedial vir- 
tues," or in which these virtues reside), for cer- 
tain parts, organs, structures, or tissues, of the 
vital organism ; and these supposed and assumed 
properties are termed " elective," and "selective," 
because they are " exerted," or "take effect," on 
some parts or organs in preference to others. They 
"elect" whereon to make an impression; they 
"select" the part on which they will act; they 
act "preferentially," etc. By such words and 
phrases (if they have any meaning whatever) the 
authors endow these dead, inorganic, and action- 
less substances (actionless except in the mechan- 
ical or chemical sense) with instinct, if not with 
intelligence. Thus, emetics are said to act on 
the stomach because they have a " special affinity" 
for that organ ; cathartics are supposed to make 
an impression on the bowels in virtue of an " elec- 
tive " affinity; diaphoretics are presumed to " se- 



16 TOBACCO - USING. 

leet, the skin, and diuretics the kidneys" as the 
theater of their "operative effects ;" nervines and 
narcotics are said to " exert their influences " es- 
pecially on the brain and nervous system ; stimu- 
lants, tonics, and antiphlogistics are said to make 
a " special impression/' or exercise their special 
affinities preferentially on the muscular and circu- 
lating systems, etc., etc. 

Such teachings reverse the order of nature. 
There is no affinity between poisons and the living 
system. There is no chemistry in vital structures. 
There cannot, in the nature of things, be any 
relation but that of absolute and eternal antipathy 
between vital organs and poisons. The relation 
of affinity, in any approved or conceivable sense 
of the word, between a vital structure and a poi- 
son, would be in derogation of the very first law 
of nature, that of self-preservation. And the 
idea that certain poisons, as arsenic, alcohol, to- 
bacco, etc., can, in certain states and conditions 
of disease, be employed by the vital machinery, 
or in some manner used in the organic economy, 
or that they can, under any possible circum- 
stances, "invigorate the system/' or "force the 
organs to perform their normal functions," or 
"impart" anything, or do aught except occasion 
vital resistance and a waste of vital power, is one 
of the most unfortunate delusions that ever pos- 
sessed the human mind. Indeed, it is the delu- 
sion of delusions. 



THE TROrEUTIES OF TOBACCO. 17 

I take the position that the doctrines taught in 
medical books (and which the medical profession 
has entertained unquestioned for nearly three 
thousand years), on this subject, are erroneous. 
On the popular theory of the " modus operandi" 
of medicines, no person ever has explained or 
ever can explain the rationale of the effects of 
tobacco, nor of any other drug, medicine, or poi- 
son. But, on the opposite theory, that the living 
system acts on the drug, we can explain, I think, 
to a positive demonstration, the rationale, not only 
of the effects of tobacco, but, also, of the effects 
of all other drugs, medicines, or poisons. 

The reader must constantly keep in mind that, 
whenever medical writers (old school) employ the 
term "properties," we are to understand effects ; 
and that whenever the term " affinity " is used, the 
proper term is repugnance, antipathy, or antago- 
nism. 

These definitions bring us to the gist of our 
controversy, the rationale of the effects of tobacco. 
What is the true solution of this problem ? Sim- 
ply, the actions of the living system in relation to 
the drug. Instead of the tobacco acting on the 
system, the system acts on the tobacco ; and the 
various " affinities," " actions," " properties," 
" impressions," or u effects," so-called, of tobacco^ 
are nothing more nor less than the various actions 
of the living organs in their efforts to rid the vital 
domain of the presence of the poison. 



18 TOBACCO - USING. 

To illustrate — tobacco-dust (and the same is 
true of any other dust), applied to the nose, oc- 
casions sneezing. Medical writers attempt to ex- 
plain this on the theory that the dust has a special 
affinity for the schneiderian membrane of the na- 
sal organ, in virtue of which it acts or makes an 
impression on that particular structure preferen- 
tially ; the vital action, which constitutes the pro- 
cess of sneezing, being simply " responsive/ ' or 
the " reaction." Not so. The nose has a special 
antipathy to the dust, and, because of that antip- 
athy, sneezes it out. 

Tobacco, when taken into the mouth, occasions 
dreuling. What is the explanation ? It is said 
that the tobacco acts on the salivary glands, by a 
special affinity for those organs, and thereby in- 
duces or compels them to secrete, or excrete, or 
pour out their contents. Not so. If affinity re- 
ally existed it would arrest action. But, the truth 
is, the salivary glands, in virtue of their inherent 
law of self-preservation (which implies a constitu- 
tional repugnance to the presence of all injurious 
substances), excrete a sero-mucous fluid to wash 
away the offending material. This excretion, 
when copious, as when occasioned by mercury, is 
termed dreuling, or salivation. 

Tobacco, taken into the stomach in large quan- 
tities, occasions vomiting. Here it is said to have 
an "elective" affinity for the stomach. Not at 
all. The vital instincts of that organ, recognizing 



THE PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 19 

the presence of an enemy, make a violent effort 
to eject it, and the result (the action of the stom- 
ach, not of the drug) is vomiting. 

Tobacco, taken into the stomach in smaller 
quantities, occasions purging, sweating, diuresis, 
etc. In these cases it is said to have a " select- 
ive" affinity for the bowels, skin, and kidneys, 
etc. Never. The living system exercises its re- 
pugnance as best it can under the circumstances, 
and expels the poison through the most conven- 
ient channels — the bowels, skin, and kidneys.* 

When tobacco is swallowed in doses not large 
enough to occasion resistance or expulsion by 
vomiting, and also when its dust or smoke is in- 
haled into the lungs, the mucous membrane of the 
mouth, throat, windpipe, and bronchial ramifica- 
tions, excretes a mucous-like fluid in self-defense. 
This is termed expectoration. And on the absurd 
notion that it has some sort of a " special affinity" 
for the mucous membrane of these parts, to- 
bacco is said to possess the property of an expec- 
torant. 



* The "action" of alcohol has long been a much-discussed 
problem as well as an interminable muddle by the medical pro- 
fession, and by temperance physiologists and chemists. Profes- 
sor Youmans and others impute its injurious effects to its "spe- 
cial affinity for the brain j" while the same author, with unparal- 
leled inconsistency, advocates its medicinal employment on the 
ground that it is a " supporter of vitality." When the first law 
of vitality is understood, such absurdities will cease to be perpe- 
trated by scientific men. 



20 TOBACCO - USING. 

Applied to the surface of animals or plants, 
tobacco occasions the death of certain insects 
which infest them, and is, hence, termed antipar- 
asitic. The doctrine of " affinity " is not applied 
to the explanation of this hilling result, but it is 
just as applicable as in any of the preceding 
cases. The effect is death, or death-tending, in 
all cases. And the same is true of alcohol. 

In doses large enough to nauseate the stomach, 
tobacco occasions not only an excretion of mucus 
from the lining membrane of the mouth, throat, 
and pulmonary apparatus, but also a preternat- 
ural discharge from the liver, termed cholorhcea, 
or cholerosis. In this case the poison is said to 
exercise a preferential affinity for the liver, to act 
upon it specifically, etc. No. The liver is doing 
all it can to defend itself against the presence of 
the tobacco, while the tobacco is doing just noth- 
ing at all. The tobacco is just as quiescent, in- 
ert, inactive, actionless, affinityless and property- 
less, in the mouth, nose, throat, lungs, stomach, 
bowels, blood, and brains, of a human being, as it 
is in the box, paper, pouch, or bladder, of the to- 
bacconist. And it would remain quiescent in the 
vital domain forever if the vital organs would let 
it alone. But this they will not do. This they 
cannot do. So long as they possess life, vitality, 
so long they will and must war upon all noxious 
matters. And just here is the greatest blunder 
ever made by the scientific world. This warfare. 



THE PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 21 

by the vital organs, has been mistaken for the ac- 
tion of the drug* 

Tobacco is also said to possess a parturifacient 
property, that is to say, it hastens delivery, and 
causes abortion or miscarriage, in cases of preg- 
nancy. This is accounted for by the ever-conven- 
ient "special affinity," in this case "exerted" 
on the uteru3. A mistake, as usual. The uterus, 
in common with all vital organs, is aroused to de- 
fensive action ; and as it has no power or means to 
act defensively, or repulsively, except by contract- 
ing its muscular fibers and expelling its contents, 
the result is premature, and, perhaps, violent deliv- 
ery, as is the case when ergot, conium, emetic 
tartar, etc., are administered. 

By some authors tobacco is said to be anaphro- 
disiae. By this is meant a weakening or de- 
struction of the functions of the sexual organs. 
That its prolonged use is followed by this result 
(and the same is true of all narcotic stimulants), 
is very certain, and the explanation is sufficiently 
obvious. It is not because the tobacco has an 
elective or selective affinity for the sexual organs, 



*An<T a world of delusion, and a host of bad habits are attrib- 
utable to this mistake as their primary cause and parent source. 
It is because of this mistake that the medical profession, despite 
the multitudinous demonstrations to the contrary, still persist 
in administering alcohol as a medicine on the absurd theory that 
it is a "supporter of vitality." 



22 TOBACCO - USING. 

but because their vitality has been measurably 
exhausted in warring against it. 

But the most mysterious and complicated 
problems relate to its so-called nervine, stimulant, 
and narcotic "properties," or effects. It is for 
these effects that it is used habitually. And as 
these "properties" are not understood by the 
people, and are totally misapprehended by the 
medical profession, I shall endeavor to explain 
them clearly; and, by this means, explain them 
away. 

When a large quantity of tobacco is applied to 
a vital organ or structure, and resisted or expelled 
with great violence, as by sneezing, vomiting, or 
purging, it is easy enough to understand the ra- 
tionale. But when smaller quantities are taken, 
and, in gradually-increasing doses diffused through 
the whole organism, and expelled by a nearly bal- 
anced determination of blood to all of the outlets 
of the body, the explanation is not so obvious. 
Yet the same principle applies. 

A small quantity of tobacco (of course quantity 
here is relative, for a small dose to one person 
might be a large one to another) received into the 
organic domain in any manner, whether by smok- 
ing, chewing, or snuffing, or by cutaneous absorp- 
tion, is carried through the circulation to the 
emunctories, or depurating organs — the skin, 
liver, lungs, bowels, and kidneys. It is resisted 



TIIE PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. Z6 

moderately by all of the organic instincts, the re- 
sult of which is a gentle excitement or disturbance 
of the whole organism. Every structure and or- 
gan, and all parts of the vital machinery, are in 
commotion — in a state of morbid or preternatural 
activity. And, as sensibility depends on vital 
action, and is intensified by increased vital action 
(whether the cause of such action bo normal or 
abnormal), there is necessarily, in connection with 
the unwonted excitement, some degree of a pleas- 
urable sensation pervading the whole organism, 
amounting, often, to positive exhilaration, and 
which is really a slight degree of feverishness, or, 
in other words, moderate intoxication. The rea- 
son why the sensations are pleasurable instead of 
painful, is because, in this state of general com- 
motion and moderate excitement, the circulation 
is accelerated without being materially unbalanced. 
Were the doses large enough, or so applied, as 
materially to unbalance the circulation and de- 
termine the vital resistance mainly to some one 
point or excretory organ, congestion and obstruc- 
tion would occur, and then sensation would be 
changed to irritation, and there would be pain in- 
stead of pleasure ;* and the pain would be pre- 



*A similar condition of exhilaration often precedes the " at- 
tacks" (as tbey are improperly called) of yellow fever, cholera, 
and other malignant diseases. And the explanation is the same 
in both cases. As the vital powers are rallying their forces to 
expel the poison (whatever it may be), there is, at first, a sense 



2i TOBACCO -USING. 

cisely proportioned to the violence of such local 
determination, and the degree of the consequent 
congestion, as we have seen in the cases of sneez- 
ing, vomiting, and purging. 

But this method of provoking preternatural 
sensibility is not only disordering the whole vital 
machinery, but certainly, and inevitably, and pre- 
maturely, expending the unreplenishable fund of 
life. It is drawing fearfully on the capital stock 
of vitality, and if no fatal disease is induced, the 
mind must decay and the body die so much the 
sooner. Sensibility is like money in bank. There 
is just so much, and it may be drawn out and ex- 
pended in a day, a year, or a century. But, un- 
like money, it cannot be renewed. All that we 
can do is to use up the original stock. We can 
not manufacture more, nor purchase it. If we use 
it judiciously — if we misuse and waste none of it 
— it may serve us threescore and ten, or even a 
hundred and twenty, years. We may enjoy nor- 
mal sensibility till the last hour of existence, and 
then go through the great transition stage of death 
"like a shock of corn fully ripe." But if we 
provoke its preternatural expenditure, we may 



of unwonted energy and a pleasurable excitement pervading the 
whole system, attended, often, with unusual buoyancy of spirits, 
and intense mental activity. But very soon, perhaps in an hour, 
the patient is powerless, perhaps fatally prostrated, the intensity 
of the vital struggle ("reaction ") having exhausted the life- 
forces. 



THE rROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 25 

outlive our normal sensibilities, and find pain, irri- 
tation and feebleness in our organs, where should 
have been pleasure, sensation, and strength. This 
is why the devotees of liquor, tobacco, etc., lose 
their capacity to enjoy before they lose the capac- 
ity to exist. And in view of this principle of the 
organic economy — this irreversible law of nature 
— it may be truly said that all the immediate 
pleasures gained by unnatural excitement and 
stimulation are at the cost of permanent misery 
and early decline. 

The excitement, disturbance, stimulation, ex- 
hilaration — call it what you will — caused by to- 
bacco, is fever, and nothing else. It is disease. 
It is certainly abnormal action, and all abnormal 
action is disease; and all disease is wasteful of 
vitality precisely in the ratio of its violence and 
duration. And vitality once lost can never be re- 
gained. 

In somewhat larger doses, tobacco is said to 
" exert its stimulant property.' ' In this case 
the poison is sent out of the system more partic- 
ularly through the cutaneous emunctory. There 
is, therefore, an increased determination of blood 
to the surface, analogous to the hot stage of a 
mild fever. It is fever. In medical parlance it 
is " stimulation." But fever and stimulation are 
equally and always pathological conditions — dis- 
eases. When the people understand that stimu- 

9 
Tobacco-Using. u 



26 TOBACCO - USING. 

lation is not a condition of " augmented vitality," 
but of vital expenditure, they will have a rational 
basis for anti-tobacco reform, and temperance re- 
form, and health reform. 

In very large doses tobacco is said to manifest 
its narcotic property. Now it is said to have a 
special affinity for the brain. Nothing of the sort. 
But if there are any two things in God's universe 
whose relations are pre-eminently the opposite of 
affinity, those two things are brain and tobacco. 
The true explanation of the narcotic "property " 
(effect) is this : As a large quantity of the poison 
is more immediately dangerous to life, and cannot 
be so well transported through the circulation to 
the various outlets of the body, it is resisted by a 
violent determination of blood and nervous energy 
to the first passages ; so violent, often, that the 
brain is deprived of the supply necessary for the 
performance of its functions, and narcosis, stupor, 
insensibility, apoplexy, anesthesia, etc., result.* 

And now we see how and why it is that a small 
dose of tobacco is "nervine," a larger dose "stim- 



* In the second stage of yellow fever, and in the collapse of 
cholera, and in the early stage of the severest cases of typhoid, 
"congestive," and "pernicious" fevers, "reaction" does not 
occur. The patient becomes prostrated in the cold stage, and 
soon sinks and dies. These cases are precisely analogous to the 
narcosis occasioned by tobacco. Were the doses of tobacco large 
enough (unless vomiting occurred), the patient would die without 
"reaction," or "consecutive fever." 



THE PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 27 

ulant," and a very large dose " narcotic. " The 
same is true of alcohol and of opium. The facts 
I have adduced, let it be remembered, do not im- 
ply that there are nervine, stimulant, and narcotic 
properties residing in tobacco as separate entities, 
as is the common opinion ; but they do prove con- 
clusively that the poison is expelled in different 
directions by different modes of vital action, ac- 
cording to the condition of the various vital or- 
gans at the time, and the quantity of the poison 
to be expelled. And these processes of expulsion 
are actually diseases, though termed exhilaration, 
stimulation, and narcosis. And all disease, it 
should not be forgotten, no matter what its cause, 
is wasteful of vitality. 

The principle I am endeavoring to establish 
will appear still plainer when we compare the so- 
called "modus operandi" of tobacco with that of 
the two agents medicinally and pathologically 
most nearly allied to it, viz., alcohol, and opium. 
Alcohol has more stimulant " property " (effect) 
compared with its nervine and narcotic effects, 
while opium has more of the narcotic " property " 
(effect) than tobacco. And for these reasons 
physicians of the drug schools prefer alcohol 
when the indication is to stimulate, or as the 
technical phrase is, " support vitality," while 
opium is preferred for the purpose of diminishing 
sensibility and allaying pain. 

Tobacco, being intermediate, while many milder 



28 TOBACCO -USING. 

articles, as castor, musk, valerian, assafoetida, etc., 
are less objectionable as mere nervines, it is never 
employed medicinally for its nervine " property," 
except in the cases of old " tobacco topers." 

As a luxury, or excitant, and for sensuous 
gratification, tobacco is employed almost wholly 
for its nervine effect.* When first taken, by a 
person unaccustomed to its use, unless the quan- 
tity be extremely small, its narcotic effect will be 
the only one manifested, unless some local disturb- 
ance, as emesis, or catharsis, occurs. This is be- 
cause, when it first comes in contact with living 
tissue, the organic instincts, being unimpaired, 
resist it with great energy. Two or three whiffs 
from a cigar, or a single pinch of snuff, have often 
rendered the novice unconscious and helpless in 
less time than one minute, like an apoplectic 
stroke ; and an ordinary quid, held in the mouth 
only for a few seconds, has caused the most vio- 
lent retching and vomiting. Infants have been 
killed by a cataplasm of tobacco applied to the 
skin, and domestic animals have died very sud- 
denly after swallowing a quantity that would be 
only a " reasonable allowance," or a " second nat- 
ure " to a confirmed and veteran tobacco-user. 

But after the vital instincts are subdued, so to 



*And as this nervine effect (or "property," as it is. called) is 
the great source of mischief and misery, we ought to understand 
it 



THE PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 29 

speak, that is, rendered measurably insensible and 
torpid by its prolonged use, a much larger quan- 
tity can be taken with only nervine effects ; and 
thus, as the vitality wastes away, the quantity 
can be increased indefinitely, with the same man- 
ifestations of effects, but with an ever-increasing 
and insatiate desire for more and still more of the 
poison. And the more the vital powers are ex- 
hausted by its use, the greater will seem to be the 
necessity for stimulation, and the more ungovern- 
able will be the morbid craving for it, and the more 
miserable and wretched will the poor victim be with- 
out it ; so that, as is the case with its co-fiends 
and twin-demons, alcohol and opium, uncontrolla- 
ble irritability, delirium tremens, and absolute in- 
sanity frequently occur, when the constitutionally- 
demoralized tobacco-user has been deprived of his 
customary indulgence for a few hours. 

It will be seen that tobacco, like alcohol and 
opium, occasions seemingly contradictory and op- 
posite effects. (This has always been a puzzle to 
the medical profession.) It occasions increased 
vascular action, and it occasions decreased vascu- 
lar action ; or, in professional language, it excites? 
or stimulates, and it depresses or narcotizes. And 
here, as we go along, we may solve another prob- 
lem that has perplexed medical men in all ages. 
They h&ve never been able to agree as to which 
is the primary ) and which the secondary r , " opera- 



30 TOBACCO - USING. 

tion " or effect of alcohol, opium, or tobacco. One 
class of authors maintains that it stimulates in 
the first instance, and that the subsequent depres- 
sion is the collapse or debility consequent on the 
previous excitement ; while the other set contend 
that the primary effect (" operation ") is narcotic, 
the stimulus, when occurring, being the "reac- 
tion" of the system against the depressing "ac- 
tion " of the drug. This controversy, which is, in 
its nature, interminable, is important in illustrating 
the utter impossibility of explaining any of the 
effects of tobacco (or any other drug) on the 
prevalent theory that it, in some mysterious and 
incomprehensible manner, acts on the living sys- 
tem. 

Neither of the above hypotheses is true, for, 
scientifically speaking, they neither stimulate nor 
narcotize. They do not " operate " at all. They 
do nothing. They are done unto. But, let it 
never be forgotten, stimulation is one kind of vi- 
tal action in relation to an injurious substance — 
one form of disease ; narcosis is another form of 
vital action — a different disease, and exhilaration 
or nervosis is still a different disease, or manifest- 
ation of vital action. Either alcohol, opium, or 
tobacco, may occasion either nervine, stimulant, or 
narcotic effects alone, or all of them successively, 
according to dose and mode of administration. 
But these effects, let me repeat, are not the exer- 



THE PROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 31 

tions or actions of properties inherent in the drug, 
but actions and efforts of the living system to rid 
itself of its presence. 

But it may be objected, "If these poisons do 
not act on the system, they superinduce an action, 
or occasion certain effects, and that, so long as 
actions and effects result, what is the difference, 
practically, whether the drug acts on the living 
system, or the living system acts on the drug? " 
I answer, It is all difference. It is the exact 
truth that we want. It is the kind of action that 
we should understand. We can never adequately 
appreciate the disastrous consequences of liquor- 
drinking, opium-eating, or tobacco-using, until we 
clearly comprehend the why and wherefore. If 
the action is in no sense on the part of the drug, 
as I maintain, but wholly on the part of the living 
system, then the important question arises, is this 
action, in any given case, physiological — useful — 
or is it at all times and under all circumstances, 
pathological — injurious ? 

And still another objection may be raised : 
Allowing that tobacco is a positive evil, under all 
circumstances, may it not be & relative good under 
some circumstances? These questions can only 
be answered by a reference to the general laws of 
vital actions. 

All the actions of living beings are either nor- 
mal or abnormal, healthy or morbid, physiological 
or pathological, productive or destructive. They 



32 TOBACCO - USING. 

are either the processes of health, or the processes 
of disease. Normal vital actions relate to the 
growth, development, and replenishment of the 
organic structures. They are all embraced in 
the functions of nutrition and reproduction. 
They employ for these purposes what are termed 
Hygienic Agencies — air, light, water, food, sleep, 
exercise, rest, etc. They appropriate nutrient ma- 
terial to the formation of tissues and organs, 
while they deterge the system of its waste parti- 
cles, or effete matters. If this balance between 
waste and supply is perfectly matained, no disease 
can exist. But if any poison — tobacco, for ex- 
ample — is introduced into the system, this balance 
is disturbed; the actions become abnormal; the 
vital organism is sick. 

Now, ail morbid or abnormal vital actions relate 
to the expulsion of foreign or morbific materials 
from the body, and to the reparation of the dam- 
ages which their presence has occasioned. Thus, 
place a little nicotiana (one of the " chemical con- 
stituents " of tobacco) between the eyelids, and 
they will quickly become red, hot, swollen, and 
painful — in a state of inflammation. If the drug 
is reapplied several times, ulceration will follow. 
And then, when the poison is removed by the proc- 
ess of ulceration, the healing process commences, 
and granulation and cicatrization take place. 
Here are manifested all the processes of disease 
— defense, expulsion, and reparation. All of 



the raorERTiES of tobacco. 33 

these processes are remedial; hence disease itself 
is " remedial effort," whether successful or unsuc- 
cessful in restoring the condition of health. And 
these processes, varying in different degrees, and 
affecting different parts and organs more or less, 
according to the kind and quantity of the morbific 
agent, or agents, constitute all of the diseases of 
which the vital organism is susceptible. 

All diseases are caused by poisons or impurities 
either ingenerated because of obstructions in the 
depurating organs, or introduced from without. 
Simple fevers, when properly managed, are exam- 
ples of successful remedial effort ; consumption, 
cholera, hydrophobia, etc., are usually examples 
of unsuccessful remedial effort. 

There can be no better illustration of that vexed 
question, the essential nature of disease, nor of 
that other equally mysterious problem, the " mo- 
dus operandi " of medicines, than the effects of 
tobacco on persons unaccustomed to its use. Let 
such a person hold a quid in his mouth for ten 
minutes, or take a full pinch of snuff, or smoke a 
" fragrant Havana," and note the symptoms. 
Very soon he is sick all over and all through. 
Every fiber of his body is disturbed ; every organ 
is morbid ; his circulation is abnormal ; his respi- 
ration is diminished ; every tissue is acting defens- 
ively, remedially. The telegraphic nerves have 
instantly conveyed the impression to every part 
that an enemy is within the citadel of life. Ev- 



34 TOBACCO - USING. 

ery sentinel is aroused. An alarm pervades the 
whole organic domain. The poison is recognized 
by the vital instincts to be of that dangerous kind 
"which must be energetically resisted, and the en- 
tire vital machinery co-operates in the defensive 
struggle. There is war ; not between two self- 
acting forces, but by one self-acting force against 
an intruding, or, rather, intruded, material. The 
muscles tremble or cramp ; the mouth dreuls ; 
the eyes weep ; the stomach retches, or vomits ; 
the bowels gripe, or purge ; the skin sweats ; the 
brain reels ; the mind is confused ; and, in ex- 
treme cases, the remedial struggle is so violent as 
to paralyze the muscles and suspend the mental 
functions. 

No sane person will pretend that this condition 
of the system is anything but a state of disease. 
It is, too, a very complicated disease, for the rea- 
son that all parts of the vital domain are actively 
manifesting their repugnance to the presence of 
the poison. 

But, suppose the person take only one-tenth of 
the quantity necessary to produce the above 
symptoms ? It is as plain as arithmetic that he 
will have only one-tenth as much sickness. The 
organism will be but slightly disturbed ; and the 
damage to his system — the waste of vital power 
— will be one-tenth as great. And whether one 
takes a full dose and is violently sick for a few 
hours once or twice a week, or small doses several 



TIIE PROPERTIES OP TOBACCO. 35 

times a day and is moderately sicJc all of the time, 
the ultimate result is the same — wasting disease 
and premature death. 

With regard to the remarkable number of " me- 
dicinal properties " attributed to tobacco, it may 
be pertinent further to remark that it is precisely 
because the poison is so inimical to life that it is 
ranked with so many classes of medicines. It is 
because so many of the vital organs are manifestly 
associated in the effort to resist or expel it that so 
great a number of "properties " are imputed to 
it. The more intrinsically pernicious a drug or 
poison is, the more energetically (other circum- 
stances being equal) will the vital powers oppose 
and resist it ; and the more generally will they 
appear to combine in their efforts to expel it; 
hence, the greater will be the sum or range of its 
so-called " medicinal properties.' ' Thus, as a fur- 
ther illustration, the preparations of mercury, 
antimony, iodine, and other potent drugs which 
are well known to be among the most destructive 
agents employed in medicine, are said also to pos- 
sess a wide range of " therapeutic virtues," each 
counting no less than ten or a dozen. 

Different doses of these drugs, as is the case 
with tobacco, occasion very different effects, thus 
again proving that " medicinal properties," as ex- 
plained in medical books, are mere myths of the 
imagination, and have no existence in nature ; 
and demonstrating, again, that the effects of all 



36 TOBACCO - USING. 

drugs, medicines, or poisons, are explanable only 
on the theory of vital resistance. Indeed, the 
cure of diseases by means of drug-remedies is 
predicated on the principle of inducing other dis- 
eases to remove existing ones, as expressed and 
admitted in the maxims respectively of the allo- 
pathic and the homeopathic schools : " contraria 
contraries curantw 9 " and " similia similibus cu- 
raniur." 

In comparing the effects of tobacco with those 
of alcohol, opium, and other drugs, I do not wish, 
in this place, either to approve or condemn the 
employment of these as medicines. With this 
matter I have now nothing to do, and I only in- 
troduce it for illustration. It is well known that 
persons may become so addicted to arsenic-eating 
that they cannot discontinue the habit without 
feeling very miserable ; and the more they have 
been injured by it the more they will suffer for a 
time on abandoning it ; yet no one pretends that 
arsenic is anything but a potent poison, while sci- 
ence shows that the relations of arsenic and to- 
bacco to the vital organism are precisely the same. 

Perhaps it may be well, before dismissing this 
branch of our subject, to meet a very natural ob- 
jection which may be suggested in opposition to 
my theory of " modus operandi" by indicating, 
very briefly, the reason why the vital powers resist 
the presence of poisons ; for it has been asked, 
and may be again, " Why should the living sys- 



THE TROPERTIES OF TOBACCO. 37 

tern worry itself and waste its strength in getting 
poisons and impurities out of the system if these 
do nothing in the system? Why not let them 
alone?" It might be a sufficient answer to these 
and all similar questions to ask another : Why 
should the good housewife remove the dust and 
other impurities from her clothes and her rooms if 
the dirt and impurities do nothing ? 

It is not what poisons and impurities do, but 
what they are, that induces vital resistance. It 
is the presence of these things in the channels of 
life where they have no business, no use, that is 
objectionable. The tidy housewife will not, can- 
not, and should not, tolerate the presence in her 
garments or in her house of anything which is not 
useful— usable. If she did, the things would eventu- 
ally accumulate so as to render the clothing useless 
and the house uninhabitable. The tenant must keep 
his house in order or it will not keep him. And 
the spirit, which, for a limited period, inhabits 
an earthly tenement, must keep its body in order 
or the body will perish. 

But it may be still further objected: "Why 
should the living system resist and expel drugs 
and poisons in so many different methods? If 
they do nothing, why not treat them all alike?" 
I answer : All substances have chemical (not vi- 
tal) relations to all other substance — relations of 
attraction and repulsion according to molecular 
arrangement or electrical states. Of course these 



38 TOBACCO- USING. 

chemical relations are as varied as are the sub- 
stances which manifest them; and it cannot be 
otherwise in the nature of things, for the good 
and sufficient reason that no two things are pre- 
cisely the same. It is the business of vital laws 
to control and subordinate chemical laws. Chem- 
istry pertains only to inorganic matter. Its proc- 
esses are simply accretion and separation, or com- 
bination and decomposition. Vital processes are 
very different. They are transformation and dis- 
integration. 

Now, vital laws can only maintain the organic 
arrangement by preventing chemical action be- 
tween the elements of the living structures and 
elements external to them. While life exists, no 
chemical action can take place. And vital organs 
resist and expel all substances which cannot be 
used in the organic domain with an intensity pro- 
portioned to the chemical affinities existing be- 
tween the elements within and the elements with- 
out the vital structures ; and hence the vital ac- 
tions in resisting the external elements must be 
as diversified as are the existing chemical affini- 
ties, or as are the different forms of matter. 

PHYSICAL EVILS OF TOBACCO-USING. 

When we say that the influence of tobacco is 
antivitalizing, we express " the sum of all villain- 
ies " so far as its relation to the human constitu- 
tion is concerned. In the slavery of mind and 



PHYSICAL EVILS OF TOBACCO - USING. 39 

body to the debasing and sensualizing habit of 
tobacco-using, there is no redeeming feature. In 
this respect it is lower in the scale of degradation 
than liquor-drinking ; for, so long as medical men 
teach (false and pernicious though the doctrine is) 
that alcohol is a " supporter of vitality," there is 
some show of reason for using it, and some miti- 
gation if not justification for the abominable traffic 
of the rumseller, and some palliation if not ex- 
cuse for the ruinous practice of rum-drinking. * 
But with a single exception (to be mentioned here- 
after), I have never heard a respectable physician 
nor an intelligent physiologist claim anything for 
tobacco, save the sensuous and besotting indulg- 
ence, while all pronounce the habit disgusting in 
the extreme, and filthy beyond the power of words 
to express. 

Of the local effects, or special diseases, result- 
ing from tobacco-using, medical men have noted 
two or three times as many diseases as they have 
enumerated "medicinal properties " in the " weed." 
Of the diseases and infirmities which frequently 
result from the habit may be mentioned cancer, 
especially of the lips and tongue ; dimness of vis- 
ion ; deafness ; loss of the sense of smell ; per- 
verted taste ; dyspepsia ; bronchitis ; consump- 
tion ; acne ; hemorrhoids ; palpitation ; spinal 



*And a shadow of a shade of an apology for the infernal license 
system. 



40 TOBACCO - USING. 

weakness ; chronic tonsillitis ; anorexia ; amauro- 
sis ; caries of the teeth ; coryza; ozaena ; epilepsy ; 
hypochondriasis ; paralysis ; impotency ; apo- 
plexy ; tremors ; delirium ; insanity ; etc. 

Surely this catalogue of special effects is suf- 
ficiently fearful; but these maladies are " trifles 
light as air " compared with the general or con- 
stitutional infirmities and disabilities. The local 
or special effects are manifested in comparatively 
few cases, while the damaging effects on the con- 
stitutional stamina are experienced in all cases. 

To weaken the life-principle is to deteriorate 
every part, organ, structure, and tissue, of the vi- 
tal machinery. It depraves the whole nature. It 
perverts the entire being. It debases the whole 
man. It degrades the image of God. 

The intelligent reader hardly need be told that 
the habitual or even occasional use of any poison, 
is injurious to the vital structures. "We have al- 
ready seen how and why. Even when employed 
as medicines, in cases of actual sickness, poisons 
are confessedly evils ; and the most that is pre- 
tended for them is, that they are necessary evils, 
or the least of two evils. 

By lowering the tone of vitality, tobacco-using 
impairs the functional ability of every organ of 
mind and body. 

The excitement, commotion, or feverishness, re- 
sulting from the use of tobacco, may be mistaken 
for increased energy, just as the similar disturb- 



PHYSICAL EVILS OF TOBACCO - USING. 41 

ance caused by alcoholic beverages is mistaken for 
imparted strength. But the malaria of the swamps, 
and the miasms of the cess-pools, will produce the 
same excitement, commotion, disturbance, or fe- 
verishness, and all are alike and always wasteful 
of vitality. 

To deteriorate the general health is also to ren- 
der every part more liable to disease. A condition 
of general debility predisposes to all forms of nerv- 
ous disorders, while a depraved condition of the 
blood and secretions predisposes to fevers, inflam- 
mations, cachexies, and various forms of zymotic 
and blood diseases. 

It is true that, while all poisons produce some 
effects in common, yet each occasions some symp- 
toms peculiar to itself. Thus, of tobacco, alco- 
hol, and opium, all occasion general disturbance 
of the bodily functions, general mental derange- 
ment, hallucination, intoxication, delirium tremens, 
etc., yet these affections are differently manifested 
as one or another of the above agents has been 
the producing cause. For examples, the derang- 
ment, intoxication, etc., occasioned by tobacco is 
a quiet, dreamy kind, the intellectual mind being 
morbidly excited, the propensities irritated, and 
the body preternaturally torpid. When these 
symptoms are occasioned by opium, they are more 
violent both in the stages of excitement and col- 
lapse. The unbalanced condition of the circula- 

4 

Tobacco-Using. ^ 



42 TOBACCO - USING. 

ting and nervous systems being so great, and the 
mental operations so confused, that the mind is 
often tortured with illusions, specters, fantastical 
forms, frightful images, horrible monsters, etc. 
And when the same general condition is induced 
by alcohol, the stage of excitement is still more 
violent, as the following incident (similar to many 
we can read every day in the newspapers), which 
I clip from the Tribune at the date of this writing, 
will illustrate : 

" Mary Corcoran died under suspicious circum- 
stances on the 5th inst., and the coroner's jury 
found that it was ' intemperance and exposure, 
superinduced by bad treatment from her hus- 
band.' The matter rested until Thursday, when 
an examination commenced. The testimony shows 
that Corcoran and wife were returning from a fu- 
neral, and that Corcoran was noisy, and drove too 
fast to suit his wife, especially in attempting to 
pass another team, and she remonstrated with 
him. At that he struck her across the mouth 
with his hand, one or two severe blows. The 
next seen of Mary, in the testimony, she is out- 
side the wagon, walking toward home, with the 
wagon in advance. Corcoran then turns the team 
about toward Unionville, and when he meets his 
wife, strikes her with the butt end of his whip, 
and kicks her. She is next found in a gutter in 
front of the house, and when taken up, has con- 
vulsions, and dies in an hour or two. She had at 



PHYSICAL EVILS OF TOBACCO - USING. 43 

this time been pregnant seven months, and was 
therefore more easily affected by violent blows.' ' 

This term, intoxication, is usually applied only 
to that condition of drunkenness in which the in- 
dividual staggers, talks incoherently, becomes un- 
governably violent, or helplessly stupid. But in 
a true philosophical sense, no one can take a par- 
ticle of alcohol, opium, or tobacco, without being 
intoxicated — absolutely drunk. The individual 
with a quid in his mouth, or a cigar between his 
teeth, is as verily intoxicated, although he may 
keep about his ordinary business, as is the person 
who is raving with delirium tremens, quarreling 
with the lamp-post, murdering his wife, or lying 
insensible in the gutter. 

It is an utter impossibility for the functions 
either of mind or body to be performed in all re- 
spects normally, when any disturbing cause exists 
within the organic domain — a principle which all 
reformers, and all teachers, physical or spiritual, 
will do well to take cognizance of. When the vi- 
tal powers are engaged in fighting an enemy, so 
to speak, they are, just to that extent, disqualified 
for performing their functions normally. This 
principle is well illustrated in violent fevers, and 
in all severe acute diseases. Introduce the virus 
of the rattlesnake directly into the blood, and the 
functions of nutrition are instantly suspended. 
Why ? Because all of the vital resources are de- 
voted to an effort to resist and expel the poison ; 



44 TOBACCO -USING. 

and this struggle is often so violent as to destroy life 
in a few hours. But if the virus of the rattle- 
snake were taken into the mouth, stomach, nose, 
or lungs, in very small quantities at first, and its 
use steadily persisted in, its effects and " modus 
operandi" would not differ materially from those 
of tobacco. 

It is one of the great mistakes of the medical 
profession, and one of the terrible delusions of the 
people, that certain poisons have the power to' 
" impart' ' strength, vigor, or some needed ele- 
ment, or something useful in the way of influence 
or substance. And until this wide-spread delu- 
sion is thoroughly dispelled from the public mind, 
I have little hope for the reformation of the human 
race, and still less for the reformation of tobacco- 
users. Alcohol, opium, rattlesnake's virus, and 
tobacco, all and each can be so administered as to 
occasion the nervine effect which constitutes the 
charm and fascination of tobacco-using. But is 
not the association of these agents in " medicinal 
properties " a sufficient reason for execrating 
them forever from the habits of rational beings ? 

THE BREATH OF LIFE. 

There is one view of the physical evils of to- 
bacco-using which has never been presented dis- 
tinctly by writers on this subject. I mean the 
effect of the habit on respiration. Tobacco-using 



THE BREATH OF LIFE. 45 

directly and fearfully lessens the breathing capac- 
ity. This is one reason why tobacco-user3 require 
more sleep than others, other circumstances being 
equal.* Now, the available life-force of every 
living being is precisely in the ratio of the devel- 
opment of the respiratory organs. Tobacco-using, 
so long as it is continued, constantly diminishes 
the breathing apparatus. This is easily explained. 
Any one, on going, on a hot summer's day, from 
the stifling stenches of an uncleaned city, to the 
purer breezes of the open country, may have a 
realizing sense of the principle involved. His 
lungs will expand spontaneously. They seem to 
open full and deep to take in as much vital air as 
possible. It is a luxury to breathe. But in the 
dirty city, the accumulated impurities of the at- 
mosphere are resisted by the pulmonary structures. 
The glottis partially closes to keep them out, and 
all of the respiratory muscles contract spasmodic- 
ally to prevent their entrance. Breathing is, 
therefore, imperfect. And when the atmosphere 
is very impure, breathing is not only imperfect 
but painful ; and in extreme cases it is entirely 
suspended. 

Now, nothing is more offensive to the vital in- 
stincts of the respiratory organs than the odor 



* The less the nervous energies are exhausted by nervines, 
stimulants, or narcotics of any kind, or, indeed, by pernicious 
habits of any sort, the less will be the amount of sleep required 
for recuperation. 



46 TOBACCO -USING. 

and fumes of tobacco. Talk about stenches, mi- 
asms, contagions, infections, from gutters, cess- 
pools, markets, stables, distilleries, tenement 
houses, offal gatherings, &c. ! All of them com- 
bined (let me gently hint to the Board of Health) 
do not equal tobacco in intrinsic repuisiveness, 
nor in their injurious effects on the lungs. 

Let any one, uncontaminated by its use, enter 
a close room where several persons are smoking, 
or a crowd in the street where fashionable young 
men most do congregate, and, in a moment, he will 
find himself breathing short and laboriously. He 
will experience a sense of suffocation, and perhaps 
feel an inclination to sneeze, retch, or vomit. His 
lungs expand with difficulty. They do not kindly 
receive the particles of the deadly narcotic. In- 
halation is feeble and imperfect, while expiration 
is more forcible and complete. And thus the 
lungs are exercised in just the manner gradually 
and surely to contract the diameter of the chest 
and permanently diminish the respiratory capac- 
ity. And as our whole population is more or less 
exposed to an atmosphere strongly impregnated 
with tobacco effluvia, the vital function of respir- 
ation cannot fail to suffer a continual deterioration. 
And all that is necessary to insure the ruin of the 
human race at no distant day is the increase of 
the habit of tobacco-using as rapidly as it has in- 
creased for three centuries past, or as rapidly as 
it is increasing at the present time. Frightful 



THE BREATII OF LIFE. 47 

examples of this possible result may be seen in 
droves in all of our cities and large villages. 

Look at the swarms of young men — young in 
years, but old in vital conditions — who commenced 
this horrid practice in early life ; and thousands 
do commence it even before the age of puberty. 
The close observer will not fail to notice in a ma- 
jority of them, something unshapely and unhuman 
— the sharp features, angular faces, projecting 
shoulders, lank limbs, narrow chests, gaunt abdo- 
mens, sallow, bilious skin, and old-manish appear- 
ance generally. To the eye of the intelligent 
physiologist these young men — mere boys in the 
order of nature — are prematurely old, already in 
a decline. I have seen thousands of tobacco-using 
young men (of twenty to twenty-five years of age, 
according to the almanac) who were physiologically 
and for all practical purposes, older than thousands 
of their fathers and grandfathers were at fifty to 
sixty years of age. A large proportion of tobac- 
co-using young men are dwarfed in body and mind 
irrecoverably ; and should they unfortunately be- 
come husbands, and fathers, their wives may well 
be pitied, while their offspring will in most cases 
be constitutionally frail and precociously dissolute, 
and many of them imbecile if not idiotic. 

Many of these young men have the character^ 
istics of dissoluteness and sensuality stamped in- 
delibly on the physiognomy as well as the physi- 
ology. And with many of them — indeed all, to a 



48 TOBACCO - USING. 

greater or less extent — tlieir secretions are all 
morbid, their excretions defective; their whole 
mass of blood foul, their breath fetid, their sweat 
nauseous, and their whole persons offensive. 

YOUNG MEN THE CHIEF SMOKERS. 

As we trace the history of tobacco-using from 
one generation to another, it is all downward — 
from bad to worse. The fathers of many of the 
tobacco-using young men of the present day did 
not commence the habit until they had acquired a 
fair vital development. But they transmitted mor- 
bid propensities to their children who commenced 
much earlier in life. Hence there is frequently 
a striking contrast between the comparatively 
stalwart tobacco-using father, and the puny, frag- 
ile, stunted, and inferior tobacco-using son. It 
is not difficult to imagine what their sons must be. 

It is worthy of remark that, as a general rule, 
persons who become addicted to tobacco-using 
(and the same is true of liquor- drinking) in early 
life, indulge more excessively than do those who 
commence in middle or mature life. Being more 
excitable, the consequent depression is greater ; 
hence the seeming necessity for more frequent 
repetitions. 

A few days since, I noticed an illustration of 
this statement, which will, I think, be found of 
extensive application. I was traveling from Phi- 



YOUNG MEN THE CHIEF SMOKERS. 49 

adelphia to New York. The car in which I was 
seated contained just forty persons. Eight of 
them were young men ; twenty-two would pass for 
middle-aged, and ten were old persons — six men 
and four women. All of the young men (and this 
was not the "smoking car forward") smoked ci- 
gars or huge meerschaums more than half of the 
whole distance ; only two of the middle-aged men 
smoked at all, and then cigars only on one occa- 
sion for a few minutes ; while but one of the old 
gentlemen befouled himself and the rest of us by 
smoking at all. I have made similar observations 
on all the leading railroads of the United States, 
and I am of the opinion that if any person, trav- 
eling in any part of the country by rail, steamer, 
ferry, or stage, will study this subject closely, he 
will find that the principal smoking is done by 
the young men. Tens of thousands of young 
men may be seen every Sunday standing around 
the corner groceries, and the thousands of tobacco 
shops (which find Sunday their principal business 
day of the week), smoking their lives away, and 
bestenching the atmosphere which others are 
obliged to breathe. And in every public gather- 
ing outside of a church, it may be readily noticed 
that the principal smoking is performed by the 
young men and boys.* 



* I saw a painfully striking illustration of thi3 fact at Bellevue 
Medical Hospital recently, on the occasion of the lecture on Yel- 



50 TOBACCO - USING. 

TOBACCO-USING AND TIGHT-LACING. 

Tobacco-using, in young persons, has the same 
effect in diminishing the breathing capacity that 
tight-lacing (which is alarmingly on the increase 



low Fever, by Professor "William Stone, M. D., of New Orleans. 
The audience was largely composed of medical students, who, of 
all persons on the earth, ought to be exempt from the vice we are 
considering. But no sooner was the lecture concluded than, 
presto, a dozen pipes and cigars were lighted in various parts of 
the hall, and the whole atmosphere of the place was rendered 
noxious and offensive in a moment ; and this, notwithstanding a 
lecture was announced to commence in a few minutes by one of 
the Professors of the College. All of these smokers were among 
the younger members of the class. None of them seemed to be 
more than twenty-five years of age. All of them, in vital devel- 
opment, were inferior specimens of humanity. They contrasted 
very unfavorably with their Professors, and were the abject slaves 
of a habit which unfitted them for the practice of the healing 
art, as much as the practice of profane swearing would disqualify 
a person for exercising the clerical profession. To these tobacco- 
using students the words of a distinguished medical writer may 
be applied with fearful significance : 

"If we have used a moderate share of intellect and very ex- 
tensive observation aright, we can find no cause of sufficient 
power, except tobacco, capable of producing the wrecks of man- 
hood that often come under our professional notice. The dull, 
leaden eye, the trembling hand, and insecure and unmanly step, 
the vacillating purpose and incapacity to reason correctly on the 
most simple subjects, are too often seen connected with the aroma 
of the deadly weed, as the victim unfolds in trembling accents his 
tale of blighted prospects and chilled affections. 

" So far are we from doubting' its power over the moral and 
physical welfare of the race, that we have not a doubt that it has 
infinitely more to do with the physical imperfection and early 
death of the children of its votaries, than its great associate, 
drunkenness itself. The deficiency of virile power in many in- 
stances of long-continued smokers is very marked. Every sur- 



TOBACCO -USING AND TIGHT -LACING. 51 

again) has. Some years ago, when the practice 
of tight-lacing, which has ruined many thousands 
of young ladies, induced the friends of humanity 
and of the future generations, to make special ef- 
forts to arrest the evil, many young men adopted 



gcon of experience must have observed it. The local surgical 
and medical treatment most effective in these cases proves con- 
clusively that it is to the debilitating and exhausting influence of 
tobacco that these sad consequences are due. 

"One would think that a man's — more especially a young 
man's — natural instincts would awaken him to the discovery that 
some horrid vampire was fanning him from mental sleep to phys- 
ical death ; he has before him every day the bright eye, the elas- 
tic step, and the lithe limbs of his companions; he sees, but 
seems not to understand, the quickly averted eye, the expressive 
and scornful face of insulted woman, as she refuses to take his 
offered but defiled seat in the omnibus or rail-car ; he permits her 
to open the window and expose her health to the chill air, to get 
a little air untainted with the loathsome aroma of his foul breath. 

"A person who is saturated with tobacco, or tobacco poisoned, 
acquires a sodden or dirty yellow hue ; two whiffs of his breath 
will scent a large room; you may nose him before he takes his 
seat. Of this he is entirely unconscious ; he will give you the 
full force of his lungs, and for the most part such people have a 
great desire to approach and annoy you. We have been followed 
round a large office table by them, backing continually to escape 
the nuisance, till we had made a revolution cr two before our mo- 
tive was perceived. 

" If there is a vice more prostrating to the body and mind, and 
more crucifying to all the sympathies of man's spiritual nature, 
we have yet to be convinced of it." — The Scalpel. 

Said the celebrated Dr. Rush, sixty years ago : ""Who can see 
groups of boys of six or eight years of age, in our streets smok- 
ing cigars, without anticipating such a depreciation of our pos- 
terity in health and character, as can scarcely be contemplated, 
at this distance without pain and horror?" Alas! the horrid 
spectacle is now before our eyes, and nowhere more prevalent 
than in our public institutions and seminaries of learning. 



52 TOBACCO - USING. 

the maxim, " natural waists or no wives." It is 
a pity the maxim was not more generally lived up 
to. But these young ladies might very well re- 
ciprocate the compliment while they accepted the 
philosophy in adopting the adage, " natural mouths 
or no husbands." Examples are, indeed, sadly 
frequent on the thoroughfares of our great cities, 
of young ladies who have destroyed more than 
one-half of their breathing capacity by this dis- 
graceful habit of tight-lacing. They cannot pos- 
sibly live to be old ; they can never become 
mothers of healthy children ; and while they do 
live they must be infirm and miserable in them- 
selves, and a source of anxiety and sorrow to their 
friends. They are invalids for life. Their wan, 
expressionless faces, harsh, pinched, contracted 
features, with livid, bilious discolorations of the 
skin, proclaim in language that the physiologist 
cannot mistake, deficient respiration and imperfect 
depuration. And the counterpart of these appear- 
ances and indications may be seen in numerous 
young men who promenade the streets behind 
lighted cigars. 

But although the physiological result is the 
same in the cases of tobacco-using young men 
and tight-lacing young women, there is a con- 
siderable difference anatomically. In the case of 
the young ladies the obstruction to respiration is 
external and mechanical, hence there is greater 
deformity, or " caving in," of the vital organs, 



A LEARNED DISCUSSION ON TOBACCO. 53 

while, with the young men, there is less malforma- 
tion or deformity of the chest. 

Let a tobacco-using young man and a tight-lac- 
ing young woman marry, and what must be the 
character of the offspring ? We can see melan- 
choly specimens enough on every hand. 

Now the only method which has ever proved ef- 
fectual for preventing or curing consumption is, 
to keep the lungs expanded as much as possible. 
And for this purpose, breathing tubes, spirometers, 
blow-guns, lifting machines, and other gymnastic 
contrivances, have been found useful. 

A LEARNED DISCUSSION ON TOBACCO. 

I cannot better illustrate the delusion that may 
exist in high places, even among the learned, on 
the subject of tobacco-using, than by the relation 
of the following incident : In 1862, 1 attended the 
annual meeting of the British Scientific Associa- 
tion, in Cambridge, England. In the Section on 
Physiology, a paper was read on the evil effects 
of tobacco-using. The author stated very clearly 
the various morbid conditions and diseases which 
are well known to result from the habit, and quoted 
a respectable array of medical authorities who de- 
clared it to be extremely pernicious. The discus- 
sion that followed the reading of the paper was 
amusing, if not instructive. Every one who spoke 
on the subject (and they were all medical gentle- 



54 TOBACCO -USING. 

men), condemned, not the tobacco, but the author 
of the essay ! " He was not a competent judge." 
" His opinions were of no authority/ ' " He was 
no physiologist," etc. All who spoke, advocated 
the use of tobacco — moderately, of course. One 
gentleman said that, " next to alcohol, tobacco was 
the best-abused article in existence." Another 
stated that he had used " the weed" for twen- 
ty-three years without being harmed by it. A 
thirdregarded it " favorable to mentality," a fourth 
considered its employment in moderation " decid- 
edly hygienic," A fifth said, " I always find my 
ideas to flow more consecutively after a few whiffs 
from a good cigar ;" and a sixth justified its use by 
reference to the Turks, " who used tobacco freely, 
yet were a strong and courageous race." No one 
replied a word to the facts, or pretended to meet 
the arguments presented in the paper ; but all who 
spoke, contented themselves with the utterances of 
opinions in praise of tobacco, and denunciations 
of the author. Surely, if an association of scien- 
tific men whose members claim to be as learned a 
body as exists on the earth, can gravely utter such 
arrant fallacies, we need not wonder at the wide- 
spread ignorance of the non-professional people on 
this subject. 

MENTAL EVILS OF TOBACCO-USING. 

Mind, in its manifestations, is dependent on the 
conditions of the bodily organs. So intimate, in- 



MENTAL EVILS OF TOBACCO - USING. 55 

deed, are the relations of mind and body that, 
whatever depraves or enfeebles one, must inevita- 
bly, to some extent, injuriously affect the other. 
As we have seen, the effect of narcotic stimulants 
is to unbalance the circulation, cause preternatural 
activity in some organs at the expense of others, 
thereby deranging all. Under the influence of 
these agents the mental processes are performed in 
a hurried, disorderly manner, and, as a conse- 
quence, the perceptions are imperfect, the reflec- 
tions unsound, rendering the reasoning powers un- 
certain and the judgment unreliable ; and it should 
be particularly noticed that, in this condition of 
unbalanced circulation and perverted nervous ra- 
diations, some of the propensities are morbidly 
excited at the expense of the moral emotions and 
intellectual faculties. 

It has been claimed, by others than the medical 
men of the British Association, that tobacco-using 
energizes the intellectual organs, promotes intense 
or concentrated thinking, and is thus favorable to 
the development of mental power. Such persons 
confound mental irritation, which is disease, with 
normal action. Tobacco does, indeed, occasion a 
forced, and preternatural attempt or effort at think- 
ing, just as the delirium of a fever does. The 
mental organs are disturbed ; they cannot rest, 
and hence their functions are exercised abnor- 
mally. The thinking, or the reasoning, which is 
performed under the controlling influence of to- 



56 TOBACCO - USING. 

bacco, or of any other morbific agent, cannot be 
depended on. It is, to a greater or less extent, 
dreamy and fantastical. Sound reasoning and 
correct conclusions depend on normal recognitions ; 
objects must be seen as they are, and their rela- 
tions truly perceived, or the mind cannot possibly 
judge and feel aright. The actions of the mental 
organs — all manifestations of mind, whether 
thoughts, feelings, sentiments, or propensities ; 
whether intellectual or affectuous — are dependent 
on the circulation of blood in the brain. Let the 
blood be congested, or increased, or decreased, in 
the brain, and the mental processes will vary ac- 
cordingly. Or if the blood is impure, the mental 
processes will be more or less deranged. These 
facts are sufficiently illustrated in cases of ordinary 
dreaming, somnambulism, insanity, delirium, etc. 
Now, so far as the intellectual processes, which 
are performed under the influence of tobacco, al- 
cohol, or opium, can be expressed in words, we 
have all the explanation the matter requires in the 
gibberish of the intoxicated person. His^language, 
as well as his acts, indicates the state of his men- 
tal organs, as truly as words of wisdom indicate the 
mental operations of the sober person. Exhilara- 
tion, which is the first stage or degree of intoxication, 
is simply a feverish disturbance of the brain or- 
gans ; and such a state of disease, however actively 
or rapidly it may cause the mental processes to be 
performed, is not favorable to the cogitations of 



MENTAL EVILS OF TOBACCO - USING. 57 

the philosopher. It is true that persons may talk 
glibly, write fluently, work actively, preach power- 
fully, and pray fervently, while using tobacco ; 
but their works, their thoughts, their feelings, will 
not be improved thereby. On the contrary, had 
they never been vitiated in this manner, they could 
certainly have done these things better. Some 
persons have that degree of mental culture, or that 
original capacity of mind, that they can exhibit 
comparatively great talent, while besotted with to- 
bacco, intoxicated with alcohol, becrazed with 
opium, or surfeited with gluttony. But what per- 
son in his right mind will affirm that these condi- 
tions add anything to their mental capacity ? 

Persons cannot study so closely, so enduringly, 
nor so accurately, under the influence of tobacco. 
This fact has been demonstrated by ample experi- 
ment, as well as proved by the laws of physiology. 
In some of the German Universities, where tobac- 
co-smoking i3 almost as common as breathing, 
careful observation has established the fact that 
those students who do not use tobacco in any form 
make the best intellectual progress. And I ap- 
prehend that the quality of the study that is per- 
formed under the influence of tobacco, is as defect- 
ive as its quantity. Philosophical problems, theo- 
logical dogmas, metaphysical speculations, and even 
political and sociological questions, are liable to be 
influenced by the pathological condition of the 

Tobacco-Using. u 



58 TOBACCO - USING. 

mental organs. If a given dose of tobacco, alco- 
hol, or opium, can so disturb the circulation of the 
brain as to cause the mind to perceive the rela- 
tions of things falsely, to recognize objects as they 
do not exist, to imagine innumerable preternatural 
objects and events, as in insanity, delirium, etc., it 
follows by irresistible logic that any dose or quan- 
tity must, to a corresponding extent, disorder the 
mental operations and render their deductions un- 
safe as guides to truth. Indeed, it may be laid 
down as a physiological maxim that the only con- 
dition of correct ratiocination is, " a sound mind 
in a sound body." 

MORAL EVILS OF TOBACCO-USING. 

If our physical and mental natures are depraved 
or perverted by any cause, our moral nature must 
suffer correspondingly. Our moral powers — the 
crowning glory of humanity, and the qualities 
that distinguish man from and raise him in the 
' scale of being above the brute creation — relate us 
to right, to duty, to truth, to immortality, to God. 
The exercise of the moral organs constitutes our 
sentiments and emotions, as distinguished from 
passions and propensities. The influence of to- 
bacco is just as demoralizing as it is devitalizing 
and dementalizing. How can it be otherwise? 
The nervine and stimulant effects of tobacco dis- 



MORAL EVILS OP TOBACCO - USING. 59 

turb the action of the moral organs, and its nar- 
cotic effect torpiiies or stupefies them, as it does 
all the mental organs. The moral sense is con- 
fused, the finer sensibilities are impaired, the con- 
science is blunted, and the aspirations of the soul 
are influenced more in the downward than in the 
Heavenward direction. The universal experience 
of all mankind will attest, and the intelligent ob- 
servation of every individual will confirm, the state- 
ment that, precisely in the ratio that persons in- 
dulge in narcotic stimulants, the mental powers 
are unbalanced, the "lower propensities " acquir- 
ing undue and inordinate activity at the expense, 
not only of the vital stamina, but also at the ex- 
pense of the intellectual and moral nature. The 
whole being is not only perverted, but introverted 
and retroverted. The association of tobacco and 
alcohol with gambling, prostitution, and all the 
disreputable avocations in society is a sufficient at- 
testation of this principle. Those who can under- 
stand the easy transition from foul blood, disturbed 
circulation, and preternatural excitement of the 
" animal passions," to immoral conduct and gen- 
eral licentiousness, will not wonder at the frequent 
and otherwise unaccountable eccentricities, de- 
baucheries, or even crimes, of men in high position, 
or even in holy orders. There is no place so high, 
no position so sacred, no character so exalted, no 
responsibility so great, no human being so pure, 
that the demoralization occasioned by the habitual 



60 TOBACCO - USING. 

use of any narcotic stimulant, may not prepare 
for deeds of darkness and shame. 

Tobacco-using, even more than liquor-drinking, 
disqualifies the mind for exercising its intuitions 
concerning right and wrong ; it degrades the moral 
sense below the intellectual recognitions. Alcohol 
so disturbs the mind as to confuse the reason more 
than it dethrones the conscience, while tobacco de- 
bases the moral sense more than it confuses the 
intellect.* 

In the delirium tremens, when induced by al- 
cohol, the patient will talk coherently, yet reck- 
lessly. He will answer to questions pertinently, 
yet untruthfully. He will make the most outra- 
geously false assertions with apparent candor and 
sincerity. He talks automatically, yet responds 
to such ideas as are suggested by others, but of 
himself seems to have no perception of what is 
true or false. The tobacco-user, in his similar 
hallucination, is more correct in his intellectual 
processes. He may reason logically and conclude 
justly, with very little moral sense or disposition 
to act right. He will confess that tobacco is a 
curse to him, and yet show no disposition to aban- 



* The liquor-drinker's vision is distorted so that he sees ene- 
mies, ghosts, or goblins, fiends and demons, in friends and neigh- 
bors, wife and children. This is why he so frequently assaults 
or murders them. The tobacco-user has his vision dimmed, or he 
sees fantastical images and harmless specters which do not call 
his muscles into violent action. This is why he is always peace- 
fully disposed. 



MORAL EVILS OF TOBACCO - USING. 61 

don it. He will acknowledge that it is a terrible 
evil to society, yet feel no impulse to do anything 
about it. He seems to know, but his will-power 
is in a state of semi-paralysis. The person who 
is under the full influence of liquor can act, but 
he cannot understand ; while the person who is cor- 
respondingly tohaceonizedj can understand, but 
he cannot act. The liquor-drinker, to a much 
greater extent, loses his perceptions of right and 
wrong. The tobacco-user may recognize a thing 
or an act to be good or bad, yet feel indifferent 
about it. 

A distinguished advocate of temperance (a med- 
ical man), who us^d tobacco excessively, said to 
me, a few years ago, as we were returning from a 
session of a National Temperance Organization of 
which he was the presiding officer, " Tobacco is 
as much worse than liquor as palsy is worse than 
fever. I know it, I feel it, but " — he shook his 
head, and did not finish the sentence. A few weeks 
afterward he died suddenly of "heart disease." 
Were it useful to do so, I could give the names of 
several clergymen who used tobacco excessively, 
and who died as suddenly, in each case the cause of 
death being ascribed to "heart disease," or "apo- 
plexy." 

If you admonish the liquor-drinker of his evil 
habit, he may be angry, perhaps assault you. 
But you may lecture the tobacco-user until your 
tongue is sore, and you cannot offend him. One 



62 TOBACCO - USING}. 

is excited. The other is sedated. The tobacco- 
user will prefer that you do not lecture him before 
folks ; but privately he will always take it kindly. 
He will confess all that you can allege against his 
evil habit, yet seem to care as little about it as 
though you had smoked a cigar with him. Tell 
him that his example is damaging to society ; that 
he is making himself disagreeable, offensive, and 
disgusting to others; that he is misleading his 
fellow-beings, and training up his own children in 
the way they should not go : he will hear you with 
stoical complacency, manifest as much concern as 
the lamp-post would have done if you had delivered 
the same discourse to it, and perhaps evince his ap- 
preciation of your preachment in smoking a cigar 
into your face the while. 

If " cleanliness is next to godliness," filthiness 
is akin to wickedness. It is wickedness. In the 
sight of High Heaven the laws which govern the 
bodily organization are just as sacred, just as holy 
(and disobedience to them just as sinful), as are 
the laws which preside over the mental and spir- 
itual natures. All are God's laws. The Bible 
declares that our bodies are the temples of the 
living God, and that whosoever defileth these tem- 
ples, God will destroy. Let not the tobacco-user 
think that he can escape the fearful penalty ; that 
laws can be abrogated, or suspended, or in any 
manner modified to individual cases. The person 
wto defiles himself with tobacco is destroyed 



MORAL EVILS OF TOBACCO - USING. 63 

physically, mentally, morally, and socially, just 
to the extent that he is defiled. The penalty be- 
ing the inevitable consequence, there is no escape 
from it. 

But has any one a moral right to poison the 
common atmosphere? A person has no more 
right to pollute the air which all must breathe 
alike with tobacco smoke, than he has to poison 
it with the fomites of yellow fever, or the infec- 
tion of small-pox. He has no more right to puff 
contagion around him from a pipe, or cigar, than 
he has to spread the virus of diptheria wherever 
he goes. And when we have a government which 
knows its duty and performs it, in the protection 
of person and property, my neighbor will no more 
be allowed to spit tobacco-juice in my house, or 
blow tobacco smoke into my face, than he will be 
permitted to strike me with felonious intent, or 
stab me with malice prepense. 

If one-fourth or even one-half of the people 
choose to defile themselves, and poison their own 
atmosphere, what right have they to defile us, and 
poison our atmosphere ? Surely, if three-quarters 
of the people prefer to be clean, and decent, and 
wholesome, they ought to have as much right to do 
right as the remaining one-fourth has to do wrong. 

As an illustration of how absurdly selfish a 
man can feel and reason when his moral sense is 
under the dominion of tobacco, I may mention 
the following incident : Said I to a gentleman who 



64 TOBACCO -USING. 

walked into my office with a lighted cigar in his 
mouth, which circumstance led to a little discus- 
sion between us, " Suppose you were sitting on 
the front steps of one of the palatial mansions in 
Fifth Avenue, indulging in your cigar as now, 
when it was offensive to all of the inmates of the 
house, would you, in that case, have a moral right 
to smoke there?" 

"Ah ! well, that would depend on circumstances. 
Providing the smoking gave me more pleasure than 
it caused pain to others, then I consider that I 
should have a perfect right to enjoy myself in that 
way." 

" But which party is to be the judge of your 
pleasure and their pain ?" 

" Of course Jam. They could not know any- 
thing about my pleasure." 

The unmitigated selfishness of the logic is char- 
acteristic of the ineffable ridiculousness of the habit. 

To perceive truth, one must live truthfully. To 
understand what relation the things of this world 
and the beings of this universe bear to each other 
or to himself, one mu3t be in normal conditions. 
To be the true interpreter of the book of nature, 
one must live in obedience to the mandates of the 
Author of that book. 

SOCIAL EVILS OF TOBACCO-USING. 

As the tone, temper, character, physical integ- 
rity, intellectual status, and moral standing of so- 



SOCIAL EVILS OP TOBACCO - USING. 65 

ciety are only the aggregate of individual quali- 
ties, no argument is needed to show that every 
person who indulges in the degrading habit of 
tobacco-using damages society as well as injures 
himself. Every person who tells a lie, who utters 
profane language, who cheats, or steals, or robs, 
or murders, does something toward the demoral- 
ization of society. But every one who lives a life 
according to the laws of life, who does not con- 
taminate himself, and who keeps the body at all 
times " an acceptable offering " to his Creator, 
contributes to the well-being and improvement of 
society. The influence of one person may be bet- 
ter or worse than that of another, because of talent 
or position ; but with the talents of an angel, a 
man's influence may be that of a fool. He may 
do more evil by the one pernicious example of to- 
bacco-using than the most brilliant intellect, or the 
most generous alms-giving, can atone for. 

It is universally admitted that tobacco-using cre- 
ates a thirst for strong drink, and leads directly 
in the pathway of drunkenness. It also causes a de- 
sire for strong seasonings, pungent aliments, and 
gross foods of all kinds, thus tending to gluttony 
and debauchery. Many temperance men have 
made a bad matter worse by changing the habit 
of liquor-drinking to that of tobacco-using. Am- 
ple experience has demonstrated that it is much 
more difficult to reform a tobacco-user, other cir- 



66 TOBACCO - USING. 

cumstances being equal, than it is to reform a 
liquor- drinker. 

But what an example the person sets to the ris- 
ing generation who voluntarily and persistently 
defiles himself with tobacco ! How can he talk 
decency, teach duty, preach morality, lecture on 
temperance, or profess philanthropy, when, with 
every breath, he gives evidence, strong and rank, 
that he deliberately disobeys the laws which God 
has implanted in his organization ? 

Wives and children are not unfrequently ren- 
dered sickly by the breath and perspiration of to- 
bacco-using husbands and fathers, I have known 
many cases of " nervousness/' and of incipient con- 
sumption, for whose existence no adequate cause 
could be discovered save the tobacco-using habit 
of the husband ; and I have known many cases 
in which these patients, who had suffered for years 
of nameless and unaccountable disorders of the 
nervous system, rapidly recovered on being absent 
from " home " for a few weeks. And I have known 
hundreds of infants and young children to be puny, 
stunted, and scrofulous, many of them incurably 
so, for no discoverable cause except the smoke and 
excretions of tobacco-using fathers. 

THE TOBACCO BUSINESS. 

If tobacco-using is wrong, then tobacco-selling 
is a wicked trade. And if both using and selling 



TOBACCO CULTURE AND REVENUE. G7 

are blameworthy, then is tobacco-raising a vocation 
accursed of God. I have known extensive dealers in 
the article who would never use a particle of it, so 
convinced were they of its evil effects, and so care- 
taking were they of their own precious selves that 
they would not even test the quality of their va- 
rious brands of cigars except by proxy. They did 
not wish to injure themselves, yet they were will- 
ing to amass fortunes by ruining others. And I 
have known persons who pretended to be reform- 
ers, nay, who professed to be Christians, and who 
would no more think of defiling themselves by 
smoking, chewing, or snuffing, tobacco, than they 
would think of committing the crimes of theft or 
murder, but who did defile themselves by cultivat- 
ing extensive fields of tobacco for the market. I 
cannot understand how these tobacco-raisers are 
less guilty, less wicked, less the emissaries of evil, 
less condemned of Heaven, less liable to punish- 
ment here or hereafter, than are the tobacco-sell- 
ers or the tobacco-users. Certainly they sin with 
less temptation, and this is an aggravation of the 
offense.* 

TOBACCO CULTURE AND REVENUE. 

Another social evil is the deterioration of the 
soil wherever the tobacco crop is cultivated. No 



*The following extract from a sermon recently delivered in 
Chicago, 111., by Rev. Dr. Hatfield, has the ring of practical 



68 TOBACCO -USING. 

known production so rapidly impoverishes the land 
on which it is grown. Indeed, everything about 
the tobacco business — its culture, its manufacture, 
its traffic, its use — is demoralizing and pestiferous, 
as much so as is everything connected with alcoholic 
beverages. Who that reads the daily papers does 
not know that tobacco frauds, and whisky frauds, on 
the revenue, are a more prominent topic than are 
all the frauds on the sixteen hundred other taxa- 
ble commodities ? And yet, not long since, a con- 
vention of tobacco merchants, representing $50,- 
000,000 of capital invested in this nefarious com- 
merce, assembled in Cleveland, Ohio, for the pur- 
pose of concerting measures to have the " oppress- 
ive restrictions " of government removed, so that 
the dealers conld do a larger and more profitable 
business. So, too, the liquor merchants, whose 
immense breweries and distilleries are rising like 
pestilential palaces all over the land, are holding 
conventions to induce government to mitigate or 
remove entirely the restrictions to their soul-and- 
body-destroying merchandise. And it is worthy 

Christianity and true philanthropy, and is as applicable to the 
tobacco as it is to the liquor business : "It was not to be ex- 
pected that the farmer should control his products in the market ; 
but if he raised them with a knowledge that they would be used 
for making spirituous liquors, he was guilty. So commission 
merchants, who sold grain for purposes of distillation, were 
guilty. If there were any such in his audience they might won- 
der that he included them ; but they should remember that this 
business, first and last, up and down, inside and out, was bad, 
and of the devil. They had better keep their hands clean of it." 



TOBACCO AND INTEMPERANCE. 69 

of remark that all other branches of trade, all 
useful avocations, sustain their share of the bur- 
dens of government with comparatively little com- 
plaint. Oh ! that peoples and government could see 
that, to permit the existence of these abominable 
callings is a war on nature, an outrage on human- 
ity, and an insult to Deity. 

TOBACCO AND INTEMPERANCE. 

As the temperance reformation and the anti 
tobacco reformation are intimately related, and as 
a large proportion of the leading advocates of 
temperance are notorious tobacco sots, it becomes 
an important and interesting question, Which is 
the greater evil of the two, tobacco-using or liq- 
uor-drinking ? From much observation and a care- 
ful study of the subject for a period of more than 
twenty years, I have come to the conclusion that, 
so far as the question of health is concerned, to- 
bacco-using is much the greater evil. I say noth- 
ing, in this connection, of tobacco-using as among 
the prominent predisposing causes of intemper- 
ance ; but, per se, I regard tobacco-using as much 
more destructive to vitality than liquor-drinking. 
It is true that tobacco-using does not occasion the 
" disorderly conduct " for which so many are ar- 
rested daily in our large cities, for the reason that 
the narcotic effects of tobacco are more prominent 
(the contrary being the case with alcohol); and 
this is the reason why, as already explained, it is 



70 TOBACCO - USING. 

more intensely antivital. The tobacco bane wastes 
the vital powers more imperceptibly, more insidi- 
ously, and for this very reason more effectually, 
than the stimulation of the alcoholic bane does, 
provided both are used with equal freedom. 

The strongest objection that is or can be brought 
against the temperance cause is the fact that so 
many who abstain from the intoxication of alco- 
holic liquor find a ready substitute in a greater 
degree of the intoxication of tobacco ; while a 
strong argument against the anti-tobacco reform 
is the fact that a majority of total abstainers from 
alcoholic beverages, resort to alcoholic medicine on 
almost every occasion of sickness or indisposition. 
It is a pity that both classes of reformers could 
not be a little more consistent. The jaded laborer, 
who is accustomed to the use of tobacco, finds the 
same sense of rest, quiet, comfort, and reinvigora- 
tion, from his dirty pipe that the inebriate does from 
his accustomed fire-water. And just here, per- 
haps, it may help both the temperance and the 
anti-tobacco causes, to point out the chief error 
and the great stumbling-block of the temperance 
advocates. It is alcoholic medication. Nearly all 
of the world-renowned champions of temperance 
are in a muddle on this question. Though con- 
demning alcohol as a poison, as antivitalizing in 
health, they admit that it is just the opposite — 
a " supporter of vitality " — in sickness and debility. 

Now, alcohol, in medical parlance, and accord- 



TOBACCO AND INTEMPERANCE. 71 

ing to the standard materia medicas, does not pos- 
sess more than one-third the " medicinal proper- 
ties " that tobacco does. And it is not a little 
singular (and a very singular inconsistency it is, 
too,) that those persons who use tobacco habitu- 
ally and abjure alcoholic beverages, never claim 
that tobacco does or can " support vitality " under 
any possible circumstances. Yet they might as 
well, for tobacco is admitted to possess all of the 
"properties " which render alcohol a u supporter 
of vitality,'' except, perhaps, the exploded non- 
sense of "respiratory food." I fear the temper- 
ance advocates (unconsciously, of course) are 
making themselves the allies of the rumseliers, in 
admitting that alcoholic poison is a vitalizing agent. 
And I fear that the medical profession is doing 
more harm in prescribing alcohol as a medicine 
than it is doing good in talking temperance. If 
the rationale of the effects of alcohol, opium, and 
tobacco, as I have presented it, is correct, it is 
demonstration strong as proof of holy writ, that 
all use of alcohol, or tobacco, as a luxury, or ex- 
citant, in health, and as a remedy for disease, is 
abuse. 

A late English writer says on the subject of the 
temperance reformation : " Such consummate non- 
sense as the ' physiological action of alcohol/ the 
' medicinal uses of alcohol/ and temperance sub- 
stitutes for alcohol, evince imbecility and ignorance 
enough to swamp a universe laden with the most 



72 TOBACCO - USING. 

advanced truths. The only hope, then, of rescu- 
ing society from its ignorance and attendant in- 
temperance is to educate the people physiologically. 
Spend the money now lavished on temperance or- 
ganizations, in establishing agencies for the diffu- 
sion of sound information, and the temperance 
movement would take strides such as have never 
been dreamed of by its most enthusiastic advocates. 
But let temperance be a principle, a natural truth, 
an enlightened mind, and a virtuous life, and not 
an institution with 'moral suasion/ ' legal suasion ' 
and other party issues — mere gibberish, meaning- 
less exclamations, serving to raise a hideous din 
in the ears of society, and distract mankind from a 
consideration of the real merits of the question/ ' 
The spirit and lesson of the above extract are 
just as applicable to the anti-tobacco movement as 
to the temperance movement. 

EXPENSIVENESS OF TOBACCO-USING. 

It has been estimated that two thousand millions 
of dollars are annually expended diredtly on al- 
cohol, opium, and tobacco, by the four leading na- 
tions of the earth — Great Britain, France, Russia, 
and the United States. The indirect expense — 
loss of time, sickness, casualties, etc., cannot be 
reckoned at less than an equal sum. How much 
of this enormous waste is attributable to tobacco- 
using we can only estimate approximately. But 



EXPENSIVENESS OF TOBACCO - LSINC1. 73 

it cannot be much if any less than one-fourth of 
the sum total. Here, then, are five hundred mill- 
ions a year wasted on the "filthy weed." It is, 
perhaps, useless, yet it is interesting to speculate 
concerning the amount of good which might be done 
were this sum devoted to useful purposes. It 
would certainly go very far toward providing for 
every pauper, educating every child, and reforming 
every criminal, on the earth. Several years ago 
a writer in Blackwood! % Magazine computed the 
whole amount of tobacco grown on the face of 
the globe at not less than two million tons — four 
thousand millions of pounds. The price paid for 
tobacco by consumers, including all varieties, must 
exceed twenty-five cents a pound. Choice brands 
have been sold at auction in Kentucky, quite re- 
cently, for one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents 
per pound; so that, probably, if we should esti- 
mate the whole cost of the tobacco used in the 
world at one thousand millions of dollars annually, 
we should be more likely to be within than outside 
of the truth. Then there is the loss of hundreds 
of thousands of acres of land desecrated to its 
cultivation, and the loss of the time of hundreds 
of thousands of persons engaged in its manufac- 
ture and sale. 

A curious statistician has calculated that the ex- 
penditures, directly and indirectly consequent on 
tobacco-using, amount, in a single century, to a 

Tobacco-Using. ® 



74 TOBACCO -USING. 

sum equal to all the property on the earth. If 
the money expended for tobacco were to be placed 
at interest, and the interest compounded semi-an- 
nually, it would more than justify this seemingly 
extravagant calculation. If a person smokes half 
a dozen cigars daily, they must cost him not far 
from fifty cents. This, at compound interest, 
would amount, in thirty years, to something like 
ten thousand dollars. Three hundred millions of 
smokers at this rate, would waste in a single gen- 
eration the fabulous sum of $3,000,000,000,000 ; 
and in a century a sum quite beyond all ordinary 
comprehension. 

Many college students expend for cigars more 
money than their board bill amounts to. I have 
known a poor mechanic, with his wife, children, 
and furniture, turned into the street for non-pay- 
ment of rent, when his cigar bill for the quarter 
amounted to more than his indebtedness to his 
landlord.* 

These are serious thoughts for the toiling mill- 
ions, on whom the chief burdens of the extrava- 
gance and dissipations of all classes fall. What- 
ever is used or wasted, they must produce it. If 
all the property of the earth is wasted in riotous 



* The money expended for cigars by thousands of industrious 
laborers, mechanics, and artisans, is just the difference between 
comfort, competence, and a happy home, and a life of poverty 
and degradation on the part of the parents, and, not unfrequently, 
of ignorance and vice on the part of the children. 



CONCLUSION. 70 

living, sensuality, and debauchery, once in a cen- 
tury, or often er, they must reproduce it. When 
the laboring masses emancipate themselves from 
slavery to tobacco and alcohol, they will very soon 
thereafter solve the vexed question of Labor and 
Capital, for they will be independent pecuniarily, 
and can dictate their own terms. 

CONCLUSION. 

Perhaps it would be difficult to sum up the nat- 
ure, "properties/' and effects, of tobacco-using 
more pithily or pertinently than was done long 
ago in the closing sentence of King James' 
" Counterblast to Tobacco. " 

" It is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful 
to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the 
lungs, and, in the black, stinking fumes thereof, 
nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of 
the pit that is bottomless/ ' 

To which may be added the concluding verse of 
the description of tobacco and its votaries by 
Joshua Sylvester, the poet and contemporary of 
James I. : 

" If then tobacco-using be good, how is't 
That lewdest, loosest, basest, foolishest, 
The most unthrifty, most intemperate, 
Most vicious, most debauched, most desperate, 
Pursue it niobt ; the wisest and the best 
Abhor it, shun it, flue it as a pest ? " 



7 G TOBACCO - USING. 



THE REMEDY. 



" Touch not, taste not, handle not." Do not 
think for a moment of substitutes. Abandon the 
foul thing at once and forever. Do not try absti- 
nence as an experiment, but adopt it as a duty, a 
principle, a necessity. Differences of opinion ex- 
ist, and much discussion has been had on the ques- 
tion, whether it is better to abandon the habit of 
tobacco-using at once, or leave off by degrees. 
My answer is, Leave off at once. The experiment 
has been thoroughly tested, in cases of liquor- 
drinkers, of leaving off gradually or suddenly, 
and the result has always been in favor of break- 
ing off at once. 

" Dr. Day, the Superintendent of the Inebri- 
ate Asylum, publishes a letter, in which he advo- 
cates the practice of totally withdrawing from the 
habitual drinker all liquor, in opposition to the 
prevalent idea that the patient must be gradually 
weaned from the use of alcoholic substances, and 
founds his assertion on the fact that he has treated 
2,500 cases of inebriety during the past ten years. 
He believes that a man who has been in the habit 
of drinking a quart of liquor per day will suffer 
more by being allowed only a pint and gradually 
less within the same lapse of time, than he will if 
he is kept altogether from the use of it. The 
blood of such patients is, in his opinion, poisoned 
by the substances which alcoholic liquors contain, 



THE REMEDY. 77 

and he docs not, therefore, sec the necessity of ad- 
ministering any more of such poison, even in in- 
finitesimal doses. He believes that nothing short 
of absolute abstinence will keep the inebriate cured 
after he is raised up from his former life of degra- 
dation/ ' 

The morbid desire for tobacco will be overcome 
with much less suffering on the whole by discard- 
ing the poison at once. The least indulgence per- 
petuates the disordered condition of the nervous 
system on which the desire depends. There is no 
safety for the patient until the morbid irritability 
of the nervous system is subdued, and its normal 
sensibility restored ; and this can never be accom- 
plished so long as the least particle of tobacco is 
habitually used. An infinitesimal dose — the least 
quantity that the organic instincts can appreciate 
— is sufficient to prolong forever the shattered state 
of the nervous system ; and, until this is restored, 
the patient is not safe for a moment. Until then, 
he can have no self-sustaining will-power. Until 
then, the smell of tobacco, or the sight of a cigar, 
may reproduce the morbid craving with irresistible 
force. 

Much, however, may be done to mitigate the 
miseries of the sufferer during his transition state ; 
and having had a large experience in the manage- 
ment of these cases, I may confidently venture the 
following practical suggestions : 

For a few days the patient should be entirely 



78 TOBACCO -USING. 

quiet. He should abstain from business, and do 
as little thinking as possible. He should take a 
warm bath daily ; and whenever he has severe 
headache, or feels distracted with restlessness, he 
should lie down, take a warm foot-bath, and have 
warm wet cloths — as warm as he can well bear — 
applied to the head. He will also find it greatly 
advantageous to adopt a very simple dietary. He 
should, for a week or two at least, live principally 
on good ripe fruits and plain bread ; and even eat 
sparingly of these. All overloading of the stom- 
ach will occasion headache, and aggravate the gen- 
eral feeling of wretchedness. He should also ex- 
ercise very moderately. 

These rules, adhered to for a few days, will 
emancipate the patient from one of the worst of 
slaveries that ever degraded human nature. But 
if weeks, or months, or years, were required, the 
victory would be worth all it cost. It is rare, how- 
ever, when the plan I have briefly sketched is rig- 
idly adhered to, that more than one or two weeks 
is required to redeem, regenerate, and disenthrall 
the most besotted devotee of tobacco. And in a 
few months thereafter he will look back upon his 
former condition, and upon the habit of tobacco- 
using with a loathing and abhorrence of which he 
now can have no conception ; and probably would 
not again be thus besotted for all the wealth of 
this world. 



QUE PLATFOEM. 



[At a mooting of the frionds of Reform, held at the Health Reform Tn- 
stituto, Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 1, 1872, this Platform was unanimously 

adopted.] 

1. God, in the creation of man, established laws 
pertaining to both his moral and physical natures, which, 
had he always obeyed them, would have given him 
immunity from sickness, and would have perpetuated his 
life. Sickness and suffering had their origin in the 
violation of these laws. 

2. As man cannot have eternal life without strict 
obedience to moral law, so he cannot have deliverance 
from the terrible bondage of sickness and premature 
death without strict observance of physical law. 

3. The moral and physical natures of man are so 
intimately related that it is impossible to live in viola- 
tion of either of these laws without doing violence to 
the other. Physical law, therefore, in its sphere, is 
as sacred and binding upon man as moral law. 

4. The gospel teaches that man should live health- 
fully as well as righteously. 

5. We recognize in nature the power to restore to 
health without the aid of medicines. The true physi- 
cian supplies conditions : Nature cures. 

6. Our materia medica : Good food, pure air, pure 
soft water, light, heat, exercise, proper clothing, rest, 
sleep, moral and social influences. 

7. Our motto : Temperance in ail things. Not only 
in eating, drinking, and in labor, but in everything 
that tends to exhaust the vitality of the system. 

8. It has been well said : " A contented mind is a 
continual feast/' A well-founded trust in God is the 
best and surest promoter of cheerfulness of mind ; and 
without this all other means may fail. 



Health Reform Institute, 

BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN. 



This Institution lias a competent corps of Physicians, both 
male and female, and is under the general supervision of a 
Board of Directors. 

To those who are suffering from impaired health, and 
especially to those who have lost confidence in drugs, we 
would say, Do not Despair ! There is a method of treating 
disease, and of preserving health, so simple, and yet so effi- 
cient, that those who avail themselves of its benefits are 
saved an untold amount of suffering, and may escape an un- 
timely grave. At this Institute diseases are treated on 

fflY^IE^'IC PRINCIPLES. 

Instructions, both Theoretical and Practical, are given to 
Patients and Boarders on the great subject of 

How to Liye so as to Preserve Health, 

and also respecting the safe and sure means of Recovery from 
Disease. In the treatment of the sick, JVo Drugs will be 
given. Those means only will be employed which Nature 
can use in her Healing Work; such as Proper Food, 
Water, Air, Light, Exercise, Cheerfulness, Rest, and Sleep. 

GRAINS, VEGETABLES AND FRUITS, 

constitute the staple articles of diet. 

This Institution is admirably located on a site of over seven 
acres, in the highest part of the pleasant and enterprising city 
of Battle Creek, commanding a fine prospect, and affording 
ample opportunities for entertainment, quiet, and retirement. 

With a competent corps of Physicians and Helpers, this 
Institution offers to the sick all the inducements to Come and 
be Cured that are presented by any other. 

Battle Creek is an important station on the Michigan Cen- 
tral and Peninsular Railroads, and is easy of access from all 
parts of the country. 

ALL TRAINS STOP AT BATTLE CREEK. 

For Particulars see Circular sent fre.e on application. 
Address HEALTH INSTITUTE, Battle Creek, Mich. 



%\\ Otssag 



TOBACCO - USING; 



PHILOSOPHICAL EXPOSITION 



THE EFFECTS OF TOBACCO ON THE HUMAN SYSTEM. 



■BIT JEZ,. T. TRALL, 2&. ID., 

Author of "The Hydropathic Encyclopedia;" "Hygienic Hand Book;" "The 
Alcoholic Controversy;" "Alcoholic Medication;" "The True Tem- 
perance Platform;" "Prize Essay on Temperance;" "Prize 
Essay on Tobacco:" "True Healing Art;" &c, &c. 



PUBLISHED AT 

THE OFFICE OF THE HEALTH REFORMER, 
BATTLE CREEK, MICH. 

1872. 



THE HEALTH KEFORMER 



.A-IfcT APPEAL TO THE O-A-ZtsTIDIID PTJBLIC. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : Permit us to invite your atten- 
tion to the Health Reformer, a monthly journal, devoted to 
the exposition of the laws of our being, and the application 
of those laws in the preservation of health and the treat- 
ment of disease. 

The world is full of men and women who need reforming 
in their habits of life. And the present time, in some re- 
spects, is favorable to this work. As great changes in med- 
ical practice take place, the people lose confidence in drugs, 
and many of our public journals, which are circulating 
everywhere, speak of proper diet, bathing, exercise, and air, 
as the real reliances for health. Thus the superstitious con- 
fidence of people in doctors' doses is being shaken ; the ice 
is broken, and the way prepared to spread abroad the true 
philosophy of life, health, and happiness. 

The Reformer will avoid extreme positions, and will labor 
to disarm the people of their prejudice, and, in the spirit of 
love and good-will, appeal to them, and entreat them to turn 
from wrong habits of life, and live ; and at the same time it 
will stand in independent defense of the broad principles of 
hygiene, and gather as many as possible upon this glorious 
platform. 

And while the conductors of the Reformer may speak of 
Goa, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and the Christian 
religion, in terms of reverence, they will studiously avoid 
giving this journal the least denominational cast. We more 
than welcome men and women of all religious denominations, 
and those who are not connected with any of the religious 
bodies, to all the benefits and blessings derived from cor- 
rect habits of life. 

Our journal will contain, each month, thirty-two pages of 

reading matter, from able and earnest pens, devoted to real, 

practical life, to physical, moral, and mental improvement. 

We design that each number shall contain articles upon Bi- 

(See third page of cover.) 



HEALTH REFORMER — CONTINUED. 

ble Hygiene. We take up the subject from the Sacred Rec- 
ord of the creation of man in Genesis, his employment, his 
surroundings in Eden, and the food given him of God, and 
trace the matter in the Scriptures of ihe Old and New Testa- 
ments. 

With a large portion of the people, the Bible is the high- 
est and safest authority in all matters of truth and duty. 
Prove to Christian men and women, who fear God and trem- 
ble at his word, that existing reformatory movements are in 
strict harmony with the teachings of the sacred Scriptures, 
and they will no longer regard the subject as unworthy of 
their notice. But the very general impression that the re- 
strictions of the hygienic practice are not sustained by the 
word of God, has placed many sincere Christians where it 
is difficult to reach them. 

And it is a painful fact that the vain philosophy, driveling 
skepticism, and the extremes of some who have been con- 
nected with the health-reform movement, have done much to 
prejudice sincere persons against the true philosophy of 
health. But those who revere God and his holy word can be 
reached with the plain declarations of the Scriptures of the 
Old and the New Testament. We promise to make it ap» 
pear that the Bible does not justify Christians in many of 
the common and fashionable habits of our time, which bus* 
tain a close relation to life and health, but that it does de- 
mand of them changes from these wrong habits. If we sue* 
ceed in doing this, it will be considered, by all Bible 
Christians, that it is highly proper that the attention of tha 
Christian public should be called to the subject of Bible 
Hygiene, and that we may expect, so far as our journal is 
concerned, to receive liberal patronage from those who bear 
the Christian name. 

Ladies and gentlemen, you need our journal, and we need 
your patronage. Please subscribe for it. It will cost you 
only the small sum of one dollar a year. 

Address Health Reformer, Battle Creek, Mich. 






/ * 



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Tobacco-Using. A philosophical exposition of the Effects 
of Tobacco on the Human System. By R. T. Trail, M. D. 
Price, post-paid, 25 cents. 

Cook Book, and Kitchen Guide: comprising recipes for 
the preparation of hygienic food, directions for canning 
fruit, «fec, together with advice relative to change of diet. 
Price, post-paid, 20 cents. 



Hydropathic Encyclopedia. 

40 cents. 



Trail. Price $4.00, postage 
Trail. Price 30 cents, post- 



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age 2 cents. 

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Science of Human Life. By Sylvester Graham, M. I 
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Valuable Pamphlet. Containing three of the most important 
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